Facebook has won an appeal against Belgium's privacy watchdog, allowing it to resume collecting data from non-Facebook users in the country. A Belgian court had previously ordered Facebook to stop tracking users who were not members of the social network. The order related to a Facebook cookie that tracked the activities of anyone who visited the website, regardless of whether the person was logged in to the social network or not. The cookie gathered information such as which pages the user visited and how long they stayed on each page. Following that ruling, Facebook had had to stop using the cookie and block access to its website to Belgians who were not logged in to the social network. Now that this ruling has been overturned, it will be able to resume tracking the internet activities of non-users. A Facebook spokesperson commented on the result, saying: “We are pleased with the court's decision and look forward to bringing all our services back online for people in Belgium.” The Belgian privacy watchdog said that they were “not happy” with the decision and that it planned to launch an appeal and investigate all aspects of Facebook's business, not just its data tracking cookie.Â
