Facebook Rule Change After Privacy Ruling
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Facebook is locking people out of its site unless they are registered users, following a privacy ruling.
At the moment, people can view the public pages on Facebook without having to be signed in.
But after the Belgian Privacy Commissioner said that it could not track non-registered people using cookies, Facebook says it is going to lock them out altogether.
The move applies only to Belgium at the moment, but the ruling was made using European law, which means similar issues could arise in other countries.
A Facebook spokesman said that cookies had protected Belgian people from more than 33,000 "takeover attempts" and attacks on its network in the past month.
They added that the firm was "disappointed", and said from now on people would be forced to log in if they want to see content which is publicly available to users elsewhere.
The biggest losers are likely to be businesses that are increasingly using Facebook to promote themselves.
