Facebook to appeal Belgian privacy ruling

Computer screens display the Facebook sign-in screen in this photo illustration taken in Golden, Colorado

Facebook said on Monday it would appeal a court ruling ordering it to stop using a cookie to track people in Belgium who are not Facebook users, but who visit Facebook pages.Belgium's data protection regulator took the U.S. company to court in June, accusing it of tracking so-called non-users without their consent.

At stake is the so-called 'datr' cookie, which Facebook places on people's browsers when they visit a Facebook.com site or click a Facebook 'Like' button on other websites.
"We've used the 'datr' cookie for more than five years to keep Facebook secure for 1.5 billion people around the world," a spokeswoman said. "We will appeal this decision and are working to minimize any disruption to people's access to Facebook in Belgium.”
The privacy regulator argued that the social network site breached EU privacy law by tracking non-users without their consent.
Facebook says the cookie only identifies browsers, not people and helps it to distinguish legitimate visits from those by attackers.
Belgian newspaper L'Echo said the court had given Facebook 48 hours to comply or pay a 250,000 euros ($268,975.00) daily fine to the Belgian Privacy Commission.
Neither the court nor the Privacy Commission could immediately be reached for comment.
($1 = 0.9295 euros)