France has given Facebook just three months to stop tracking non-members of its social network, or else they will start fining the social media group.
Non-members of Facebook are currently tracked by cookies – small text files which gather information about the user as they browse the site – which Facebook currently hold on to for up to two years.
According to the BBC, the French data protection agency has also insisted on increasing the password character limit from six to eight digits to increase account security.
Reacting to the news, Facebook assured users that privacy remains a top priority:
“Protecting the privacy of the people who use Facebook is at the heart of everything we do. We… look forward to engaging with the CNIL [French data protection authority – Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertes] to respond to their concerns.”
The CNIL have also banned Facebook from continuing to transfer personal data to the US. Facebook has confirmed they currently use other legal contracts to transfer data to the US.
The move follows a move in Belgium last year, where a similar order prevents the website from collecting data from users who have not signed into an account to view a page.
