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Facebook is fined €150 000 for violating data protection rules by French regulator on Tuesday 16 MayPicture credit: Hamza Butt 

Users cannot consent to the “massive combination of their data and cannot oppose it, whether it is when they open an account or afterwards. They therefore have no control over these combinations,” the agency said in a statement issued on 16 May.

The regulator also accused Facebook of “unfair” tracking of people as they browse the internet through the cookie “datr”, without offering users sufficient information on this.

The CNIL stated that the cookie does not specify that data is collected on, and especially outside, of Facebook. Users may not fully understand that their data is systematically collected when they surf the internet. The commission ruled that this data collection via cookie is unfair.

International cooperation

In 2015, after Facebook announced changes to its data usage policy, the CNIL started investigating whether Facebook conforms to French law on informatics and civil liberties.

The French regulator has been working together with the relevant authorities in Belgium, Germany (the German state of Hamburg), Spain and the Netherlands who are also conducting investigations on Facebook’s activities.

The Financial Times reported on 16 May that:

“Elsewhere regulators in Belgium said Facebook did not have ‘valid consent’ to track users when they browse the web. The Belgian privacy commissioner has already taken Facebook to court for the way it uses cookies to track people online. In the Netherlands, authorities criticised the social network for showing targeted adverts based on people’s expressed sexual preferences. Facebook has stopped this practice, according to the Dutch regulator. Last week, Facebook’s messaging service WhatsApp was fined €3m by Italian authorities for sharing data with its parent company.”