Revealed: Metropolitan police shared sensitive data about crime victims with Facebook

Observer investigation reveals Meta Pixel tool passed on private details of web browsing for targeted advertising purposes

Britain's biggest police force gathered sensitive data about people using its website to report sexual offences, domestic abuse and other crimes and shared it with Facebook for targeted advertising, the Observer has found.

The data was collected by a tracking tool embedded in the website of the Metropolitan police and included records of browsing activity about people using a secure" online form for victims and witnesses to report offences.