Facebook has been sued for allegedly scouring through users’ private messages to provide data to marketers and advertisers, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in a federal court in California.
Facebook has “systematically violated consumers’ privacy by reading its users’ personal, private Facebook messages without their consent,” said the complaint, filed December 30 in the US District Court for Northern California.
“Representing to users that the content of Facebook messages is ‘private’ creates an especially profitable opportunity for Facebook, because users who believe they are communicating on a service free from surveillance are likely to reveal facts about themselves that they would not reveal had they known the content was being monitored,” it said.
Facebook users Matthew Campbell and Michael Hurley filed the class-action suit in the Northern District Court of California.
It was filed on behalf of all US Facebook members who have used the site to send or receive a message that includes a link.
“Facebook scanned plaintiffs’ messages and searched the website identified in the URL for purposes including but not limited to data mining and user profiling,” the suit said.
