Facebook Sued for $15 Billion over Alleged Privacy Infractions

Just after Facebook went public as Mark Zuckerberg pushed the button to ring the iconic NASDAQ bell, the largest social network in the world was hit with a class-action lawsuit by the law firm Stewarts Law US. The firm announced that it put together 21 privacy lawsuits against Facebook into one class-action suit which charges the social network with violating user privacy by allegedly tracking their web usage. The law firm is demanding a sum of $15 billion which it arrived at by calling on the US Wiretap Act that “provides statutory damages of the greater of $100 per violation per day, up to $10,000, per Facebook user,” as stated in its class-action suit.

Interestingly, the timing couldn’t be better since Stewarts Law filed the suit just a little while before Facebook was set to offer its shares on NASDAQ for $38. In addition to that, the sum of $15 billion is less than the amount of money that Facebook would make at $38 by just $1 billion. That said however, David Straite who is a partner at Stewarts Law US told Bloomberg (via CNET) that the sum in damages could go up further and that his firm is “evaluating the way in which non-US residents” could be added to the plaintiff’s list.

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: General, Web
Tags: Facebook, Legal