Facebook Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over User Data Mining

Facebook Slapped with Lawsuit About Mining Private Messsages

Menlo Park based social networking giant Facebook has been hit with a lawsuit by two users, Michael Hurley and Matthew Campbell, who allege that the company data mines the private messages of its users for “links” which it then sells to marketers, data aggregators, and advertisers.

According to the lawsuit, this practice is done without any formal disclosure to participants as to how their seemingly private messages will be used. In addition, the two social networkers are looking to expand their lawsuit to class action status on behalf of the Facebookers.

If they are able to obtain class action status, the lawsuit may involve as many as 166 million users in the USA. The case was filed in US district court in Northern California.

As per Hurley and Campbell, Facebook’s practice constitutes a beech of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and other California statues on privacy restrictions and anti-competitive practices. For now, Facebook has not issued any public statement, but other sources report that the tech giant considers the case without merit. However, declaring a lawsuit as being “without merit” is obligatory. Can anyone actually imaging Facebook expressing that the lawsuit makes a valid point which will be explored further in court?

On The Web:
Facebook faces suit over private messages
http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/03/technology/facebook-privacy-lawsuit/index.html