Facebook could be taken to court over alleged tracking
November 17th, 2011 - 10:54 pm ICT by Aishwarya BhattLos Angeles, Nov 17 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Facebook could be dragged before the US Congress following reports that the social networking site tracks users even after they have logged out. After months of speculations, Facebook finally admitted that they use tracking cookies to watch their users on the Internet.
The chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee at Congress Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) says Facebook does not have the right to watch users especially without their consent.
Speaking on the subject on Wednesday, Rockefeller announced that, “No company should track customers without their knowledge or consent, especially a company with 800 million users and a trove of unique personal data on its users. If Facebook or any other company is falsely leading people to believe that they can log out of the site and not be tracked, that is alarming.”
Facebook has reacted to the concerns of the Senator promising that they are ready to meet him and explained the concept better to him. The company said they keep certain cookies but they delete them within 90 days.
Facebook says users are made aware of the policy in its Privacy Policy and Help Center.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center led the call for lawmakers to investigate Facebook for tracking its users.
Facebook is use by over 800 million users making it the most popular Internet site in the world.
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Tags: commerce science, electronic privacy, facebook, internet site, jay rockefeller, lawmakers, personal data, privacy information center, social networking site, speculations, transportation committee, trove, us congress