Facebook does fling COOKIES around, but privacy is assured

Imagine a 'Like' button being clicked on your face, forever

Facebook has responded to Belgian researchers' claims that the company violates European data law in an exhaustingly pedantic press release.

Last week, a team of Belgian researchers reported that the social network giant had been illegally tracking the web browsing habits of every visitor, even if they aren't account holders, or have explicitly opted out of tracking when within the EU.

When contacted for comment back then a Facebook mouthpiece complained to The Register that the authors had never been in contact with Facebook, and anyway, Facebook had also explained "in detail the inaccuracies in the earlier draft report" despite the authors having not been in contact.

With the Belgian Privacy Commission set to announce what steps it will take on 29 April, and a current class action suit in Austria, the ZuckerBorg are scrambling their PR department to shoot down allegations of breaches of European privacy laws.

This press release/rebuttal features an exhausting number of Claim vs. Fact bullet points in which Zuckerberg's foot soldiers mostly tart up tangential and apologetic details which confirm the claims made, as if they were ingénue darlings.

Facebook does not directly refute the accusation that it "surreptitiously uses cookies to track people everywhere on the web". Instead, the advertising giant claims it is "transparent about [its] use of cookies, and has long disclosed their use to improve [users'] experience on Facebook".

Some of the claims that Facebook refute don't even appear in the report. The third claim, that "there's no way to opt-out of social ads" is directly contradicted by the report, which states that "users can opt-out from appearing in so-called Social Ads."

The Register is waiting from further clarification on the source for these claims from Facebook. ®