Facebook: It was a bug that resulted in collection of non-users’ online data

Facebook has slammed a recent study report compiled by the Belgian Privacy Commission (BPC) which claimed the social networking giant is involved in tracking all visitors to its site, even those who don’t have a Facebook account or those who have explicitly chosen to opt out of tracking.

The research revealed that the social networking giant was tracking web movements of all the visitors to its site without their consent, whether or not they were logged in to Facebook or were not the registered users of the site or have opted out, through use of social plugins, primarily the ‘Like’ button.

Clearing its stand on the issue, Facebook said that it was a bug which resulted in collection of data from non-Facebook users via websites embedded with its Like button and refuted of it being an intentional move.

“We don’t, and this is not our practice. However, the researchers did find a bug that may have sent cookies to some people when they weren’t on Facebook. This was not our intention – a fix for this is already under way,” Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president of policy for Europe, noted.

Allan claimed that the report is mistaken about how Facebook uses personal information.

“The report gets it wrong multiple times in asserting how Facebook uses information to provide our service to more than a billion people around the world.”

Allan also rejected claims that Fecebook doesn’t respect people’s choice to opt out of behavioral ads.

“If someone opts out, we no longer use information about the websites and apps that person uses off Facebook to target ads to them,” said Allan.

“People can opt out of seeing ads on Facebook that are based on the websites and apps they use off Facebook through the industry-standard Digital Advertising Alliance opt out, the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance opt out or the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada opt out. Here, they can opt out of these ads from Facebook and from more than a hundred other companies. People can also opt out using their phone settings,” he added.

“Facebook honors this choice on any device where you use Facebook, whether it’s your phone, tablet, or desktop. When you opt out, Facebook no longer shows you these types of ads, but it also means Facebook does not add this information to the interest lists we use to decide what ads to show you.”

Megha