Ahead of Mark Zuckerberg’s behind closed doors meeting with the European Parliament, researchers from Cliqz – a Mozilla and Hubert Burda Media-backed web browser – have urged EU lawmakers not to let the Facebook CEO off lightly with their questions regarding ‘shadow profiles’ and the social network’s collection of data.

In a letter to the European Parliament, Cliqz founder Jean-Paul Schmetz and managing director Marc Al-Hames have suggested that lawmakers address the issue of Facebook storing the data of non-users, asking Facebook why it stores the data of people that aren’t using its platform and if these people will be given the opportunity to delete this data.

Research from Cliqz, at the backend of 2017, revealed that Facebook’s tracking scripts are present on 27.1 per cent of all page loads on the web. These scripts enable Facebook to link behavioural data to individual internet users, whether they are signed up to Facebook or not.

The issue of these tracking scripts, which create shadow profiles, is part of a wider issue surrounding the way Facebook handles the data of both users and non-users, stemming out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Here’s the letter in full:

Dear President of the European Parliament,

Dear Members of the Conference of Presidents,

Dear Members of the European Parliament,

Dear Members of the LIBE Committee,

A few weeks ago, the members of the US Congress let Mark Zuckerberg get away with feigning ignorance on the most critical questions about the privacy of all Internet users: Does Facebook create “shadow profiles” – i.e. profiles of non-members – and does Facebook collect information about people outside of the Facebook platform. We are hopeful and confident that our representatives will be more tenacious.

Since the parliamentary hearing was organized as a closed-door meeting to respect Mr. Zuckerberg’s privacy, allow us to suggest some key questions to ask him directly:

Mr. Zuckerberg: Cliqz’s researchers have established that Facebook’s tracking scripts are on more than 1 out of 3 pages of the web, collecting people’s browsing behaviour combined with unique identifiers. The Cambridge Analytica data leak affected 2.7 million EU citizens whereas Off-Facebook data collection affects every single internet user in the world, regardless whether he or she is a Facebook member of not.

Why do you collect this data and do you store this data?

You have announced a few weeks ago that you will offer Facebook members the possibility of deleting this data (which suggests that you do store this data). When will people see the data you have collected and stored? How many months of browsing history did you store? Will non-Facebook members be offered the possibility to see and destroy their data?

Where exactly in your past privacy policies did you tell your users that you were collecting and storing this data? Did you seek to receive consent for this sort of collection from your users in preparation for GDPR?

Dear Members of Parliament, please do not allow Mr. Zuckerberg to plead ignorance on these important question as he did in front of the US Congress. Even if he did not know at the time, he does know as his announcement a few weeks later made clear. Please insist on clear answers about the extent of tracking of users and non-users outside of Facebook properties. You can pin him down with one simple, unambiguous question:Do you store off-Facebook browsing data collected from non-Facebook users?

For our part, we build tools to keep Facebook and others from creating shadow profiles of internet users. We are a German start-up backed by Burda and Mozilla and we build browser, search and data protection technologies. Our Cliqz and Ghostery browsers make the hidden surveillance network of tracking scripts visible for everyone.

Our data scientists would be more than happy to show you, dear Members of the Parliament, some examples of how dangerous tracking-based data collection is.

Please, do not allow the strong platforms of this world to destroy the privacy of your citizens.  As proud citizens of the EU, we count on you! 

Yours faithfully,

The Cliqz Team

Marc Al-Hames                                                                                                           

Managing Director, Cliqz GmbH      

Jean-Paul Schmetz

Founder, Cliqz GmbH