Belgian court warns Facebook of fines of up to EUR 100m

The Belgian Court of First Instance on Friday threatened Facebook with a fine of up to 100 million euros (125 million U.S. dollars) if it continued to break privacy laws by tracking people on third party websites.

The Belgian court condemned the giant social network for not respecting Belgian legislation on data protection.

Facebook, which will be fined 250,000 euros a day or up to 100 million euros if it does not comply with the court's judgment, said it would appeal the ruling.

"Facebook informs us insufficiently about gathering information about us, the kind of data it collects, what it does with that data and how long it stores it," the Belgian court said. "It also does not gain our consent to collect and store all this information."

The court has largely followed the argument developed by the Belgian Commission of Privacy, or Belgium's privacy watchdog, which had brought this action against Facebook Inc., Facebook Ireland and Facebook Belgium.

"The court fully followed the point of view of the commission," said Anouk Devenyns, press magistrate of the Belgian Court of First Instance.

Facebook is required to suspend the tracking and recording of data of its users surfing from Belgium, and must also destroy all information collected illegally.

Facebook's lawyers indicated that they would appeal this decision.

On the Belgian side, the Secretary of State for Private Life, Philippe De Backer (Open Vld), did not hesitate to speak of "victory for the private life" of Belgians.

The president of the Privacy Commission (CPVP) Willem Debeuckelaere also expects to see change with the entry into force in May next year of a new European legislation on the issue of privacy.