Privacy advocates often blast Facebook and though the company has taken some concrete steps to ensure that its billion-plus users have adequate privacy options on the social network, it seems to find itself in a pickle every now and then. The social network is now facing a class-action lawsuit following a ruling from a California judge, it is accused of scanning users’ messages without their consent to deliver targeted ads.
Facebook’s position on this was that it didn’t break any rules, and that the message scans were actually protected under an exception found in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, reports Reuters. The exception states that the “interceptions” are deemed to be lawful if they happen during the “ordinary course” of service provider’s ordinary course of business.
The judge wasn’t having any of it though, saying that Facebook had failed to explain how the message scans done without users’ consent were considered to be under Facebook’s ordinary course of business.
The plaintiffs want Facebook to stop scanning messages, and there might be some compensation involved with the class-action as well, according to Bloomberg any Facebook user who has sent or received links through private messages on the social network over the past two years would be eligible for payout that may be “as much as” $10,000.
Engadget reports that a spokesperson for Facebook has declined to comment on this class-action lawsuit.
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