As a response to the privacy ruling over cookies by the Belgian Privacy Commissioner, Facebook now requires Belgians to log-in to gain access to pages of the site.
This means that Belgians who want to view a certain page on Facebook but don't have an account, will be forced to sign in before they can view a certain page or related content.
According to a report by Reuters, additional security steps were also added by Facebook. These security steps will be given to users who attempt to log-in to Facebook from an unrecognized web browser.
"We're disappointed we were unable to reach an agreement and now people will be required to log-in or register for an account to see publicly available content on Facebook," said a Facebook spokesperson.
All of the changes that were made for Belgium was done in order to comply with the privacy ruling over the 'datr' cookies by the BPC.
The 'datr' cookies were placed on the users' browsers whenever they visit a Facebook.com site or click a Facebook 'Like' button on other sites. These cookies record the web activity of users and can live in a web user's browser for two years.
In a report from BBC, Facebook argued that the cookies in question are the ones responsible for the prevention of fake accounts, the reduction of account hijacking risks, the protection of user content against theft, and the deterrent of denial-of-service attacks.
"We had hoped to address the BPC's concerns in a way that allowed us to continue using a security cookie that protected Belgian people from more than 33,000 takeover attempts in the past month," added the Facebook spokesperson.
Facebook plans to appeal over the privacy ruling, but for the mean time, Facebook will be imposing these new rules and regulations for Belgian users to prevent a $265,000 daily fine.
