Facebook tracking of online activity breaches EU law, report says

Facebook can track your online activity even if you don't have a Facebook account, and that may breach European privacy laws, according to a report by two Belgian universities.

According to the report, first reported by the Guardian, Facebook uses cookies to track people's online activity without their consent – even if they have logged out of Facebook, deactivated their account, or specifically opted out of online advertising in Europe.

The report was ordered by the Belgian Privacy Commission, with research conducted at the University of Leuven and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, after the commission determined that Facebook's privacy policies, which were updated in January, violated European customer privacy laws.

It says that Facebook's revised data use policy has enabled the social media giant "to create a vast advertising network which uses data from inside and outside Facebook to target both users and non-users of Facebook."