Facebook tries to head off court order in Belgium

Facebook is mounting a defense against charges of improperly handling consumer data that were brought by Belgian regulators and affirmed by a court in the country. Executives from the company met with regulators at the Belgian Privacy Commission. Though it’s a relatively small case, it could be a bellwether for how European regulators reconcile the practices of American technology giants with Europe’s stricter privacy rules. The regulators are concerned about Facebook’s practice of tracking people who are not users of the site but visit without signing up. In June, they brought the charges against the company, and a court ordered the company to halt the practice earlier in Nov for non-users in Belgium. Facebook argues the cookies used to collect the data serve a security purpose.

“There’s a huge problem of account takeovers on the Internet right now,” Alex Stamos, the company’s head of security, said, according to the Journal. “Every day we catch about 400,000 attempts globally to log into an account with the correct username and password but it actually not being the user themselves.” The court that found against Facebook ordered the company to pay more than $250,000 per day once it officially received the court’s order. The Journal reported that the company has yet to receive the document because it is still being translated into English. Though the company’s executives met with regulators to see if they could find a solution to the issue before the court order went into effect, the company has also said it intends to appeal the ruling to a higher court. The case is being closely watched as part of a larger debate over how European regulators should treat the data security practices of American companies.