Posted on July 6, 2017 at 8:45 PM

Facebook Tracks Browsing Activity Even if you are Logged Out

A recent lawsuit against Facebook was dismissed by a Judge last Friday. The lawsuit actually accused this company of tracking the internet activity of users, no matter if they are logged in or out of the app.

As said, the lawsuit was dismissed by Edward Davila, the US District Judge in San Jose, California. Judge Davila stated that there was no ‘realistic economic harm or loss’, and that there are basically no real privacy issues here.

The plaintiffs have claimed that Facebook’s ‘like’ button can store cookies from other websites, and track you in that way. Even if you aren’t logged into your account, you are still being tracked and monitored, just like your activity.

This is against many laws of users’ privacy, but it is even more than that. If true, this has also violated the California privacy and wiretapping laws, not to mention federal ones. However, the Judge decided that plaintiffs did not have enough evidence to actually prove their claims.

He also said that using Facebook in incognito mode, or keeping their browser history private would have been enough for them to protect their privacy. According to the Judge, the fact that browser actually sends off your info to Facebook automatically doesn’t mean that the info is being illegally taken from you.

So, if you click the like button on a third-party website, you can share the news on Facebook without the entire copy/paste process. However, your browser will also share extra info about this with Facebook directly.

A spokeswoman for Facebook has said that the company is pleased with the court’s ruling.

A similar lawsuit against Facebook was also seen in 2015 in Europe. Back then, the company was accused of tracking users via cookies and plug-ins by the Belgian Privacy Commission. According to the lawsuit, Facebook tracked users’ activity even if they deleted their profile. Worse yet, there were even reports of the activity tracking when the users never even signed up for a Facebook account.

Facebook was then ordered by the court to either stop tracking users like this in the next 2 days, or they will have to pay 250,000 euros per day for violating the users’ privacy.

Facebook then claimed that the bug was to be blamed for this type of tracking and that the issue will be fixed as soon as possible.

Similar accusations were made by European Union Commission. They warned internet users to avoid Facebook if they don’t want to be tracked and spied on. The issues are apparently still present to this day, and many are trying to figure out how to actually stop Facebook from spying on their users.