Facebook will curb sex-targeted EU ads

Facebook Inc. agreed under Dutch pressure to stop targeting ads based on users’ sexual orientation as European regulators revealed a concerted clampdown on some of the social network’s data practices.

The Dutch privacy authority said Tuesday that Facebook has now put an end to methods that breached national law. France’s data regulator, the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty, ordered the company to pay a maximum privacy fine of $166,000 for combining user data to display targeted advertising and “illegal tracking” via cookies of what users do on and off the site.

“Consumers are unaware how Facebook is using very personal information such as their sexual preferences to send them targeted ads,” said Agustin Reyna, the head of the European Consumer Organization’s digital rights team.

Facebook faces both EU and German antitrust investigations, adding to privacy probes across the 28-nation bloc. Facebook’s move to merge data from the WhatsApp messaging service with its own alarmed regulators last year, triggering probes and a pledge from Facebook to stop processing U.K. data during an investigation there.

Facebook said it is also at odds with the findings of the French data regulator, known in France as the CNIL.

“While we respectfully disagree with the CNIL’s findings, we value the opportunities we’ve had to engage with the CNIL and reinforce how seriously we take the privacy of people who use Facebook,” the company said in an emailed statement. “We are pleased the CNIL has narrowed the scope of their inquiry based on information we’ve provided throughout the process.”