strange complaint about facebook pixel tracking and beacon residents

CT1212

Free Member
Jun 16, 2021
61
3
I received a letter from someone complaining about him being illegally tracked by my website through Facebook pixel tracking. He said he emailed twice before, I can't remember seeing any of the emails, but they might have gone to spam folder and been deleted by me. Pls see part of his letter below

"The breach itself concerns on-going and unauthorised transmission of Personal Data (PD) to third parties extracted through 'social-plug-ins' you have deployed into the codebase of your web-site and in particular, that you are sending my personal data to Facebook.
Despite my earlier email complaint, your web-site continues to unlawfully 'track' me. Explicitly, along with other plug-ins found, you have embedded the Facebook 'Pixel' plug-in which by default, domain. facilitates the transmission of personal data when any visitor browses to any page within the The purpose of this letter is to notify you this processing is occurring and hope you will put in place a remedy to stop it.
The way you have installed these plug-ins does not capture the consent of the web-site visitor to this processing. Such data-processing is unlawful.
National regulators including the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) in the UK have also provided detailed guidance to business and other-group users considering how to deploy cookie technologies lawfully. Your web-site does not comply with the standards covered by this guidance.
It is accessible and straightforward for you to independently validate the compliance of your web-site using straightforward scanning/inspection tools such as themarkup.org/blacklight or cookiebot.com.
You have made no attempt to notify or request consent for dropping tracking cookies onto any of your web-site visitor's equipment and have instead used 'default-yes' consent signals which over-ride what should otherwise be a valid opportunity provided to your web-visitor to make an informed and unambiguous consent choice for their personal data to be processed by clearly identified third parties''
"

In relationship to this particular complaint, I have only got Facebook for Woocommerce plugin and Abandoned cart recovery plugin installed on my Wordpress website , I have never heard of the scanning tool or inspection tool from themarkup.org/blackknight or cookiebot.com, I don't even know what are beacon residents. I have not paid Facebook for any ads for over 6 years.

Do you think this is spam? What should I do? I have asked my website designer but he is currently really busy with other projects at the moment. I would really appreciate your advise on this.
 

ukwebhosting

Free Member
  • Business Listing
    Jun 9, 2011
    241
    62
    UK
    Hi,

    If you right click your website in your browser and click view source then do a search for <!-- Facebook Pixel Code --> it should show up if you're using it on your site.

    The full code or an example of is here just incase it is there but that bit isn't!


    It may have been added years ago and not removed.
     
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    antropy

    Business Member
  • Business Listing
    Aug 2, 2010
    5,313
    1,099
    West Sussex, UK
    www.antropy.co.uk
    Do you think this is spam? What should I do? I have asked my website designer but he is currently really busy with other projects at the moment. I would really appreciate your advise on this.
    I am not a solicitor, I'm not qualified to give legal advice, this is not legal advice, and I take no responsibility whatsoever for what you choose to do ...

    But if it were me I'd say "Sue me." and delete.

    Paul.
     
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    ctrlbrk

    Free Member
    May 13, 2021
    990
    391
    I am not a solicitor, I'm not qualified to give legal advice, this is not legal advice, and I take no responsibility whatsoever for what you choose to do ...

    But if it were me I'd say "Sue me." and delete.

    Paul.

    Except that the user wouldn't sue OP. The user would refer OP to the ICO and ICO could prosecute OP.

    ICO's enforcement powers include "the ability to fine organisations €20 million (or equivalent in sterling) or 4% of the total annual worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year, whichever is higher, for breaching data protection laws".

    @CT1212 if I were you I'd take the user's request more seriously.
     
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    Advise the person that if they do not like the way the site works, don't visit the site!

    Get their IP address and block them!
     
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    antropy

    Business Member
  • Business Listing
    Aug 2, 2010
    5,313
    1,099
    West Sussex, UK
    www.antropy.co.uk
    ICO's enforcement powers include "the ability to fine organisations €20 million (or equivalent in sterling) or 4% of the total annual worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year, whichever is higher, for breaching data protection laws".
    Could you tell me how many small businesses have been fined by the ICO for this particular issue?

    Paul.
     
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