Twitter Sued For Scanning Direct Messages

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 15, 2015 @02:16PM from the you-can-trust-us dept.

JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Twittter is facing a new possible class action suit that accuses the company of violating user privacy. The lawsuit states that the company has been "systematically intercepting, reading, and altering" direct messages, most likely a reference to Twitter's long-standing practice of automatically shortening and redirecting any in-message links. The practice could be used to monitor or redirect any URLs included in a direct message, although it's generally seen as a benign extension of the company's broader link-shortening systems. In a statement to USA Today, Twitter, to nobody's surprise, insisted that the allegations are "meritless."

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Facebook too by Anonymous Coward · 2015-09-15 14:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

Facebook is being sued over the same practice, as well as for taking it a step further. If you mention a business's Facebook link (and possibly their independent website URL) in a private message, that mention gets counted as a "like" on the business's Facebook page. So not only were they scanning PMs, they were representing endorsements that didn't exist.
This kind of shit is what you get when you use a huge advertising platform as your "private" communication hub.