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

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

[koan]

No the users of Facebook are the dense ones.

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: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"

[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:Advertsing

[sound vision]

Ghostery+Adblock+Scriptblock = No Facebook.

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.

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.