Facebook is the CEO and one of the founders of Facebook. (Photo : Reuters)
Facebook is now facing a data protection issue after Belgium's data protection authority disclosed that the company is violating the European consumer protection law.
According to the Tech Frag, the report that was commissioned by the Center of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT at the University of Leuven in Belgium, revealed that Facebook' privacy policy that was updated in January has not been changed and still violates consumer protection law.
"Facebook's Statement of Right and Responsibilities (SRR) contains a number of provisions which do not comply with the Unfair Contract Terms Directive," wrote authors Brendan Van Alsenoy, Rob Heyman, Valerie Berdoodt, Ellen Wauters and Jef Ausloos. "Facebook place too much burden on its users. Users are expected to navigate Facebook's complex web of settings in search of possible opt-outs."
Moreover,among the practices that being criticized is the failure of Facebook to secure a valid consent from the users, problematic opt-outs for behavioural marketing, no legally valid consent for users who share data between its own service such as Instagram or WhatsApp, according to Tech Crunch.
Another Facebook's data protection issue is the inadequate control mechanism and transparency where the user-generated content in commercial purposed.
Furthermore, they also addressed the "no opt-out for location-tracking" of users of the Facebook mobile app and a failure to acknowledge the data subject's rights of its users.
Meanwhile, Facebook is under investigation by the Dutch data protections, according to Tech Frag, while a Facebook spokesman said that they are confident that their policy and terms "comply with applicable laws."
