Facebook systematically intercepting private messages sent by users of that social network to gather information and sell it for commercial purposes. Matthew Campbell and Michael Hurley departed this claim, said to be based on an “independent investigation” to sue the company led by Mark Zuckerberg.
The two U.S. citizens – one from Arkansas and one from Oregon – filed a lawsuit in the District Court of Northern California in San Jose. The lawsuit was filed earlier this week, on behalf of all U.S. Facebook users who sent or received links in the past two years through a private message on this network.
The case is not only about privacy but also about business competition. That’s why we’re concerned sharing links and not simply reading the private messages (something that happens roughly a decade ago with Google, which uses an operator that “reads” the e- Private emails of users of its e-mail service to submit them, along with these emails – which are private messages -. targeted advertising)
Prosecutors of the case argue that the links shared by private message is recorded in the number of “likes” of the pages to which these links concern. As this number is indicative of the impact that particular page (which may be a company or a brand) has in the market and its potential audience, accuracy in accounting have value for owners and advertisers. In addition to the monitoring of an area considered private definitely contributes to the profiles of surfers.
Campbell and Hurley understand that by having access to such valuable information, Facebook has felt impelled to act in a harmful way. “The fact that users considered the content of the messages of Facebook as ‘private’ creates a particularly lucrative opportunity for Facebook because users believe that they are communicating in a free monitoring service tend to reveal facts about themselves that they would not reveal if they knew that they are being monitored, “reads the process quoted by Financial Times .
“So Facebook has been positioned to acquire parts of user profiles that are probably not available for other data aggregators,” continues the process, now according to the BBC. That is, the plaintiffs want to see recriminada violation of privacy, the desecration of the trust relationship between the social network and its users, and ultimately the competitive advantage of Facebook over other companies that add the same kind of information with same purpose – to market it to advertisers
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accusations “baseless”
Facebook responded through a spokesperson, Jackie Rooney, who rejected the assumptions of the process. The official position of the company in Silicon Valley is that the charges are “unfounded”. “We will defend ourselves vigorously,” said Rooney, according to Los Angeles Times . The same daily recalls, however, that a federal judge ruled in September, also in San Jose, Google should go to trial to answer the same objections. The owner of the most popular search engine on the planet is accused of illegally open and read the contents of emails that pass through Gmail.
privacy issues surrounding Facebook often cause controversy. But this time the company has to respond to a claim for damages that may be 100 dollars (73.5 euros at current exchange rates) per day of violation or $ 10,000 (€ 7,350) for each user affected by this alleged practice . As Facebook has over 166 million users in the U.S., the number of potential victims is very large.
The third way in this case is represented by Graham Cluney, which departs from the discussion about whether or not Facebook is to monitor private messages to defend it, if it does not, should do. The British expert in online security wrote in her blog, in a post quoted by the BBC, that if links are not “properly investigate” there ” a very real risk that can flow abundantly spam , scams, phishing attacks and malicious URL designed to infect recipients’ computers with malware ” .
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