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Social network to spy on users have By Benedikt Fuest and Tina Kaiser
Facebook threatens a class action lawsuit that could pull billions costs. Two American users of the social network have filed a lawsuit in a California court against the company. They accuse Facebook to have spied on the private messages of users. According to statements of the two lead plaintiffs, Matthew Campbell of Arkansas and Michael Hurley from Oregon, any U.S. Facebook users can join the lawsuit who has ever sent a link to an external website to a friend by Facebook message. Overall, the network in the U.S. of 166 million customers. So could theoretically be many millions of people took part in the action. For each user, the application requires $ 10,000 (7325 EUR). German users are not allowed for the action.
Facebook to loud accusations of Campbell and Hurley against the U.S. Federal Privacy Act Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as well as to data protection and competition laws of the State of California have violated. The Group had thus searched private messages for links to Web pages. Subsequently, the company had spied the data used to improve its marketing for advertisers and users targeted display personalized advertising. Specifically, Facebook would be sent links to pages internally similar rate as one of the users, allocated for each public page “Like” button. The information that the page has been sent as a link, stands anonymous in analysis tools and the respective website operators available, the applicants further.
Facebook dismissed the allegations in the lawsuit. “We believe that the allegations are groundless and we will vigorously defend” the group said in a statement. The lawsuit is based on investigations of several private research institutes. Among other things, the plaintiffs rely on the Swiss company High-Tech Bridge (DHB). The company had reported in August, as it had been tested on data protection breaches the messenger systems of social networks as well as free webmail services. Here HTB-generated secret websites whose links they sent over the e-mail and messenger services. Each of the services was assigned its own web page link. Then checked HTB whether and how often to access the respective websites secret was.
“Facebook was one of the web, which was caught spying on the links without their users to inform you,” it says in the lawsuit. As had Facebook in 2010 introduced his private messenger system, the corporation, however, stresses the unprecedented good data from this private messages are protected. Facebook has always done so in his public statements, as could “read only the sender and the receiver of the message content, but not third parties, not even Facebook,” the plaintiff: “Had the user know that their messages are scanned she had betrayed in these messages less about themselves. “
In his German Terms of Use Facebook has explicitly pointed out that the Group collects data when sending messages: “Every time you use Facebook or callest, we obtain data on you, for example, when you run the chronicle of another person, are shipping a message or receive, “is there. The extent to which content will be evaluated by messages is not performed accurately.
© Axel Springer SE 2013. All rights reserved
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