• Bloomberg , Thursday, November 3, 2011 2:14 PM

A German privacy watchdog is questioning whether Facebook tracks users’ Web activity even after they cancel their accounts with the site.

“An in-depth probe of the way cookies are installed after a user opens and then closes their Facebook account has made the Hamburg Data Protection agency ‘suspicious’ the company is unlawfully tracking users,” Bloomberg reports.

“Arguments that all users have to remain recognizable after they leave Facebook to guarantee the service’s security can’t stand up,” Johannes Caspar, the Hamburg data protection representative, said on the agency’s Web site. “The probe raises the suspicion that Facebook is creating user tracking profiles,” which would be unlawful if users aren’t alerted.

As Bloomberg notes, the German regulator’s action adds to probes of Facebook by the Irish data-protection agency, as well as Norway’s privacy watchdog. Additionally, a group of EU regulators has said they plan to look for possible privacy violations in Facebook’s facial-recognition feature. In a statement, Facebook says it “does not track users across the Web,” but rather uses cookies to personalize content or for safety and security reasons.

Read the whole story at Bloomberg »