Belgian court orders Facebook to stop collecting users' data
Brussels: A Belgian court has ordered Facebook to stop collecting data of users or face a daily penalty of 250,000 euros. The court found the social media site guilty of breaching Belgium's privacy laws.
According to 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. It also does not gain our consent to collect and store all this information."
The social media sites follow its user's activities using so-called "social-plug ins," "cookies" and "pixels."
Facebook has been ordered to stop the practice straight away and delete any data that it obtained by means contrary to Belgian privacy laws.
The Belgian Commission for the Protection of Privacy (CPP) had taken Facebook to court.
"We are of course very stratified that the court accepted our argument in full. Facebook is currently running a big campaign stressing the importance of privacy. Let's hope that they now put their words into practice," Willem Debeuckelaere, Head of CPP, told VRT News.
Facebook said it would appeal against the verdict.
"We are disappointed with today's verdict. Over the past few years we have worked hard to help people understand how we use cookies to show relevant content and to make Facebook secure," the company said in a statement.
The European Commission (EC) has also warned Facebook and Twitter of action including enforcement measures if they fail to reform their terms of services to fully comply with the European Union's (EU) consumer rules.
It has found Facebook and Twitter wanting in aligning their terms of services with EU consumer protection rules.
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Indigo flights chaos: SCR to run special trains to clear passenger rush
Hyderabad (PTI): The South Central Railway on Saturday announced that it would run four special trains to manage the surge in passengers resulting from the large-scale cancellation of IndiGo flights here.
The move comes as flyers face significant disruption and long queues at the airport due to the cancellation.
A press release from the SCR said it is running the special trains to clear the extra rush of passengers to Chennai, Mumbai and Shalimar (Kolkata) from Hyderabad today.
Meanwhile, as many as 43 outbound Indigo flights were cancelled from here on Saturday, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport sources said.
ALSO READ: IndiGo cancels over 200 flights from Delhi, Mumbai on Saturday
Similarly, 26 incoming flights are also likely to be cancelled during the day, they said.
The flight cancellations drew ire from passengers, who thronged the IndiGo counters at the airport demanding to know the exact situation.
“This is utter nonsense! Digiyatra done, message received that departure has been rescheduled ahead of the scheduled departure and now upon arriving at Hyderabad airport coming to know at the security checkpoint that Indigo flight is cancelled,” Tarun Singha, former Ministry of Defence spokesperson said in a post on X.
“But the thing is if you don’t shout they do nothing. Example at Hyderabad Airport, there was no staff no flight information for an hour. Then a fellow passenger started shouting on mic and an Indigo staff appeared finally,” a netizen said in a post.
On Friday, when IndiGo cancelled over 1,000 flights from across airports, its CEO Pieter Elbers apologised in a video message for the major inconvenience caused to passengers due to the disruptions.
In the one-way video communication, Elbers also said that the airline was expecting fewer than 1,000 flights on Saturday.
