Facebook Sued Over Privacy Concerns

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing

It took almost two years, but the uproar over Facebook’s BEACON TRACKING TOOL and subsequent privacy concerns that this advertising platform raised has finally resulted in a lawsuit.

Five California residents have filed suit against Facebook in an Orange County, California court claiming that Facebooks use of Beacon and it further changes to their privacy policies violated California privacy laws by disseminating personal information posted by users to third parties. The lawsuit further alleges that Facebook engages in data mining and harvesting without fully disclosing these practices its users.

For more on this lawsuit, see here:
ABC News Article on Facebook Class Action Suit

Personally, I don’t think this suit has much of a chance of succeeding.  Do I believe that FACEBOOK erred in how it protected people’s privacy?  Yes, I do. 

But for this lawsuit to have merit, I think the members of the class action will need to show that they were truly injured by the dissemination of their private data.  And given what is on Facebook, that is going to be hard to do.   Might people have been embarrased by something that was broadcast on Facebook.  Of course.  But a lawsuit?  Probably not. 

Of course, this is just my opinion.

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