Federal Judge: Facebook Must Face Suit For Scanning Messages

Rambo Tribble writes U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton on Tuesday denied Facebook's bid to dismiss a class-action lawsuit against the social media giant for violating users' privacy through the scanning of message content. In her rejection of Facebook's argument, the judge said the firm had, "...not offered a sufficient explanation of how the challenged practice falls within the ordinary course of its business."

Comments

Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[Anonymous Coward]

Mining your privacy is Facebook's entire business.

Judge seems a bit dense. ;)

Re:Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[koan]

No the users of Facebook are the dense ones.

Re:Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[BarbaraHudson]

What about Gmail and their ilk? Don't users assume that messages are private in the same sense as users on Facebook sending private messages, that only the recipient reads them?

Re:Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[stephanruby]

What about Gmail and their ilk? Don't users assume that messages are private in the same sense as users on Facebook sending private messages, that only the recipient reads them?

May be, but targeting Facebook first may just be a matter of strategy.

Facebook resells a lot of the information it gathers from its users, a lot more than Google does. I'm not saying that Google is less evil than Facebook, but if they're doing the same thing as Facebook, Google is lot better at keeping this kind of private information to itself.

Re: Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[TheRaven64]

I had a lot of sympathy for people on Facebook 4-5 years ago. After several years of repeated stories in the mainstream press about privacy violations, anyone who still has an account is guilty of wilful stupidity.

Re:Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[tsa]

Indeed. I never understood why many nerds, who are usually very sensitive about privacy, ran to Google's browser in droves.

Re: Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[tsa]

Or they are very careful about what they post.

Re:Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[sound vision]

Have there ever been any instances of Google sending themselves your browsing data without your explicit permission through Chrome? (Not through their web sites which are accessible on any browser.) I've been keeping away from Chrome for my own reasons, mainly the plugin infrastructure and lack of customization options. However, as Firefox continues to bloat and mirror Chrome in UI, I've been thinking I might as well go for the faster browser. If there are actual privacy violations in Chrome I'd like to know about it, preferably with a source cited.

Re:Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[apraetor]

Chrome doesn't read your emails and what personal information the browser does "phone home" to Google can be disabled if you so wish. The scanning of emails for ad targeting is done server-side for Gmail; still, if you replace "Google's browser" with "Gmail" then you'd have a statement I'd probably agree with. Personally I don't mind my email being checked by an algorithm to generate keywords for advertising; the keywords are only used while that specific email is open on-screen, so it's not like Google is amassing a database of every keyword ever found in any of your email -- that WOULD concern me.

Re: Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[sound vision]

Part of it is a changing political landscape. Another part of it may be "keyboard warrior syndrome" where people do things virtually that they would never do in person, due to the detachment. Except in this case, the keyboard warriors are money-hungry and power-happy corporations and government entities.

And, at least from the viewpoint of John Q. Public and Grandma Penelope Facebooker, digital privacy never existed in the first place. So even if they are aware of the violations, it's not as grievous to them as if their mail privacy were taken away.

Re: Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[CaptainDork]

Not true. Many of us use fake names and stuff. While it's true that using fake names is against FB's policy, that policy is not an affidavit. The only punishment FB can implement is to down the page.

Re: Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[TheRaven64]

People who think a fake name on Facebook protects them from any of the privacy invasion really haven't been paying attention to the last decade of data mining. The reason Facebook no longer cares if you register with a fake name is that they've been able, with very high accuracy, to get your real name and address without your providing it for a few years.

Re: Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[TheRaven64]

How does that prevent Facebook from building a profile of you? The only way to avoid that is block all Facebook like buttons, never visit the Facebook site, and make sure that your account has no friends.

Re: Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[easyTree]

Because the powers-that-be find it inconvenient to scan every physical item of mail?

Re: Yes, it's in FB's "ordinary [business] course"

[CaptainDork]

Citation needed.

Advertsing

[Anonymous Coward]

.......not offered a sufficient explanation of how the challenged practice falls within the ordinary course of its business.

Hello! They are an advertising company! The more data they can get about their suck...users, the more they know and can target ads. The Dark Side of Big Data!

D'Uh!

Re:Advertsing

[JohnVanVliet]

"Ghostery+Adblock+Scriptblock=No Ads"
true - BUT they still SELL $$$ all the information about
YOU
Your friends
all the relational data that is connected to you

Re:Advertsing

[sound vision]

Ghostery+Adblock+Scriptblock = No Facebook.

here is how it works

[lucm]

1) var x = how many Likes someone is getting

2) var y = how often people bitch about that person in private messages

3) Ratio of Candy Crush ads for that person = y/x

There, FB now has a sufficient explanation.

Re:here is how it works

[ColdWetDog]

I have 0 likes. I think that ratio is DIVINE!

Goof. You need at least approximately* 16** likes to be divine.

(* Don't get all hung up on significant figures. **Assuming integer values of likes.)

Is this whaat I think it is?

[ihtoit]

Is it a challenge to (what I think is) Facebook utilising some sort of behavioural analysis through deep content inspection?

Or do they actually have people running specific searches on content posted by specific groups or individuals?

Re:Here's a sufficient explanation

[CaptainDork]

It's a pain in the ass to have your own website and maintain it. Facebook has done all the work for us.

It's much easier to spank Facebook in court.

Of course, the real answer is to use fake accounts.

Is Google next?

[Tony Isaac]

Or Yahoo, Microsoft, Twitter...pretty much EVERY email provider scans messages for the purpose of advertising.

I'm not sure whether 1) this judge is stupid, or 2) there are a whole lot of tech companies in a lot of trouble!

The judge said no such thing

[knorthern knight]

> According to this judge,

The judge turned down a motion to throw out the lawsuit, rather than letting it proceed. This is not a final ruling on the case. You need extremely strong evidence in your favour to throw out a lawsuit at this early stage. The judge merely ruled that the lawsuit was not entirely without merit. The judge (and jury) that hears the actual case will decide who did what to whom, and if compensation is called for.