Lawsuit Alleges That Facebook Has Been Scanning Private Messages

With so many people using Facebook as a social media platform, chances are on more than one occasion, you’ve probably used Facebook Messenger to chat with your friends as well. During your chats, you’ve probably shared your thoughts, photos, and links that you think your friends might enjoy, but as it turns out, Facebook could be enjoying them too.

It seems that Facebook has recently been hit with a lawsuit that alleges that the company had scanned private messages, and if it detects that there is a link within the message, it will count as a “Like” for the page. Based on these “likes”, Facebook then uses the data to compile user profiles to help deliver targeted ads, or so the lawsuit claims.

Now as it turns out, this is something that Facebook used to do, but apparently ceased such practices a long time ago. In a comment made to CNET, “We agree with the court’s finding that the alleged conduct did not result in any actual harm and that it would be inappropriate to allow plaintiffs to seek damages on a class-wide basis. The remaining claims relate to historical practices that are entirely lawful, and we look forward to resolving those claims on the merits.”

However according to the plaintiffs, they claim that Facebook is still continuing to collect URLs from private messages and making use of them. “Facebook’s source code not only reveals that Facebook continues to acquire URL content from private messages, but that it also continues to make use of the content it acquires.” In the meantime for those who are interested, you can check out the lawsuit in its entirety here.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Facebook, Legal, Privacy