Facebook Hit With Class Action Lawsuit Over Alleged Privacy Violations

When it comes to Facebook, they are no stranger to lawsuits. The social networking giant was recently hit with a $123 million lawsuit over revenge porn allegations, and while they’ve yet to sort that one out, they have been hit with another one, except that this is a class action lawsuit involving more than 11,000 people.

The lawsuit was started by law student, Max Schrems, who felt that Facebook had violated the privacy of its users and possibly European privacy laws in the process as well. Schrems has asked those living outside of the US and Canada to take part in the class action lawsuit, and according to TechCrunch, more than 11,000 people have signed up.

According to the lawsuit, it alleges that Facebook has violated certain privacy laws, such as a data use policy which is considered invalid under the EU law; the absence of effective consent; support of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program; tracking users through external websites (through the use of the Like button found embedded on some websites); monitoring and analysis of users; the unlawful introduction of “graph search”; and unauthorized passing of user data to external applications.

The class action lawsuit is also seeking €500 per user, although based on the number of people who have signed up, that amount could very well go into the millions if the lawsuit is successful. It is unclear how Facebook will react to this, but if you are in agreement with the claims, you can sign up and be part of the lawsuit over here.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Facebook, Legal