Facebook in an unusual turn of events has been fined up to 100 million euros ($125 million) after a Belgian court threatened it of persistently breaking privacy laws by tracking people on third party websites.
In a case brought by Belgium’s privacy watchdog, the court also ruled on Friday that Facebook had to delete all data it had gathered illegally on Belgian citizens, including persons who were not Facebook users themselves.
The social media giant, which will be fined 250,000 euros per day or up to 100 million euros if it fails to comply with the court’s judgment, said in a statement it would appeal the ruling.
“Facebook informs us insufficiently about gathering information about us, the kind of data it collects, what it does with that data and how long it stores it,” the court said.
The court also added that Facebook does not seek consent before it goes ahead to collect and store all such information.
The social media group utilizes different methods to track the online behavior of people if they are not on the company’s web site by placing cookies and invisible pixels on third party web sites, the court added.
