Facebook cookies could be tracking users even after they’ve cancelled their accounts

Bloomberg is reporting that Facebook is apparently tracking users’ web activity even after they’ve cancelled their accounts. The Hamburg Data Protection agency, the European source of the reports, says that its probe uncovered that certain cookies installed after an account is opened remain even if the account is later closed, and that Facebook has justified this action in order to “guarantee” its security.

The Hamburg Data Protection agency, which functions as a privacy watchdog group within Germany, is unsurprisingly unimpressed with this excuse, and is asking Facebook to engage in a conversation about the behavior, which they say is essentially creating backend user-tracking profiles, which would be unlawful if users aren’t informed. Facebook has indicated a willingness to enter the discussion, and talk about the technical justifications for storing a tracking cookie for two years after a user leaves the service.

Facebook has come under fire numerous times for its privacy policies, and was recently forced to fix an issue which caused cookies to track users’ online activity even after they’d logged out of the service.