Facebook has gotten tangled in court cases before, where back in 2012, the social network company was sued for $15 billion concerning alleged privacy infractions. Not too long ago this month, we heard about Facebook being hit with a class action lawsuit concerning alleged privacy violations. Well, it seems that the chickens are slowly coming home to roost as Facebook has to go up against a huge privacy class action lawsuit over in Vienna.
The Vienna Regional Court has given Facebook a month (four weeks) to respond to claims filed by Europe v. Facebook, and this particular suit has also been filed on behalf of users who live outside of the U.S. and Canada, while having Facebook Ireland in its crosshairs.
Lead plaintiff Max Schrems pointed out that Facebook has implemented an opaque privacy policy which certainly overrides users’ rights, all the while cooperating alongside the National Security Agency’s PRISM program, which enabled the sharing of user data with third-party apps as well as keeping track of users’ activity on different websites due to the “Like” button. Over 25,000 Facebook users have put down their signatures in the class action, which would see it end up as one of the the largest suits of its kind in Europe. The force of discontentment has also grown with another 35,000 users having registered online.