From social media service to advertising network – A critical analysis of Facebook’s Revised Policies and Terms DRAFT 31 March 2015. The authors are part of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT/Centre for Intellectual Property Rights(ICRI/CIR) of KU Leuven (www.icri.be), the department of Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication (SMIT) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) (www.smit.vub.ac.be) and the department of Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography(nCOSIC) of KU Leuven (www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic). All three departments are part of iMinds (www.iminds.be). This report was commissioned by the Belgian Privacy Commission.

“Facebook combines data from an increasingly wide variety of sources. These sources include acquired companies, partnering platforms and websites or mobile applications that rely on Facebook (or one of its companies) for advertisingor other services.In addition, Facebook’s ability to monitor and track users’ activities outside Facebook has increased exponentially as time has gone by.Facebook’s tracking capabilitieshaveexpandedmainlythroughthe spread ofsocial-plugins (“likebuttons”) and through new forms of mobile tracking…The re-use of user content for targeting and advertising purposes is deeply embedded in Facebook’s practices. It is impossible to add any information that may not later be re-used for targeting, and any “like” may become a trigger to portray a user in a “Sponsored Story” or Social Ad. From the latter one can opt-out, but the only way to stop appearing in Sponsored Stories, is by stopping to “like” content altogether. Users are even more disempowered because they are unaware about how exactly their data is used for advertising purposes. Furthermore, they are left in the dark about their appearance in promotional content. Facebook should not only provide users with more options to control how their data is gathered, but also show users how their name and picture is used in specific instances.”