Facebook Goes On Privacy Offensive in Europe

Facebook is gearing up to fight a cascade of privacy investigations in Europe, arguing that regulators are overreaching in ways that could hurt the social network’s ability to protect users against hacking and fraud.

Ahead of a court ruling due in Belgium, Facebook is attacking this case against it as an ill-thought-out attempt to regulate privacy that would instead remove one of the tools Facebook uses to stop automated programs from hacking into users’ accounts. The case, brought by Belgium’s Privacy Commission, is the most advanced of five coordinated Facebook investigations launched by regulators from Germany to Spain. If it loses the case, in which the regulator has requested fines of €250,000 ($284,000) a day, Facebook has threatened to make Belgian users endure more identity checks when logging into the website to guard against hacking.