Dutch government may close its Facebook pages over privacy fears

The Dutch government is considering closing down its Facebook pages because of concerns about privacy, junior home affairs minister Alexandra van Huffelen has told MPs in a briefing. 

Last year Van Huffelen asked the Dutch privacy watchdog Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens for its recommendations and the AP now says it would be better to stop using Facebook pages until the company has come clean on how it processes personal data. 

The minister commissioned the research after Meta was not prepared to change the way it processes the information it gathers on people visiting government pages. The talks had been ongoing for a year at the time. 

“We don’t know if companies like Meta ask for permission to process data properly and this means the ministry may not be in line with government regulations,” she said on Friday.

Civil servants will now go back to Meta with the AP’s advice and Van Huffelen said she wanted a clear answer from the social media giant before the summer recess. “Otherwise we will have to act in line with the AP’s recommendations and stop using Facebook pages.”

The home affairs ministry has not posted on its Facebook page, which has just 21,000 followers, since October 20. Other ministries, however, have continued to do so. 

“People who visit a government page should be able to have confidence that their personal and sensitive data is in good hands,” said AP chairman Aleid Wolfsen. “This is even more important because we are talking about information about children and teenagers, who are vulnerable online and need extra protection.”

Last year a Dutch court ruled Facebook did break the law in the way it processed the personal information of people residing in the Netherlands. The court ruled that Facebook Ireland had used the information for advertising purposes without legal grounds and had passed it on to other companies, even though there were no legal grounds to do so.

The court also ruled that Facebook had not properly informed users that their information would be shared, nor that data belonging to the Facebook friends of Facebook users would also be passed on.