The French data protection authority on Monday gave Facebook to quit monitoring non-users’ internet activity without their permission and ordered the social network to discontinue some transfers of private information to America.

That deadline expired significance regulators are now able to begin taking legal action against firms relying on Safe Harbour for acceptance to transfer information.

Facebook has set up alternate legal arrangements to carry on its transports in line with EU law and has previously said that it will not use Safe Harbour as a way of transferring information to America.

It isn’t operational while the Usa and the EU agreed a fresh pact to replace Safe Harbour and European data protection authorities have said they want additional time to decide if transatlantic data transfers ought to be controlled.

“Protecting the privacy of the individuals who use Facebook is right at the center of everything we do. We … look forward to participating with the CNIL to react to their concerns,” a spokeswoman said.

The CNIL said Facebook’s tracking of non-users by setting a cookie on their browser when they see a Facebook page didn’t comply with French privacy law, without telling them.

In addition, it said Facebook uses cookies that gather info subsequently used for marketing without Internet users’ permission, and said Facebook users should get the choice of preventing the social network to be able to serve them personalised advertisements from profiling them.

The US firm was already compelled to quit monitoring non-users in Belgium following it was taken by the Belgian regulator to court.

Facebook’s changes to its privacy policy prompted the Belgian, Dutch, French, Spanish and German authorities to start investigations to learn more about the practices of the social networking giant.