Facebook sued in US for scanning private messages

New York, May 20: A lawsuit against Facebook has been filed in a US court, alleging that the social networking giant may have violated federal privacy laws by scanning private messages, a media report said on Friday. The lawsuit, certified for class action in Northern California District Court, claims that Facebook follows the practice of scanning and logging URLs sent through the site’s private messaging system which is in violation of both the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California Invasion of Privacy Act, technology website The Verge reported. The plaintiffs claim that Facebook routinely scans those URLs for advertising and other user-targeting data and maintains those records in a searchable form.

Describing the collection of that data as a privacy violation constitutes “a technical attack on basic elements of computer programming,” the company argued. The court records strongly suggest that the company maintains a persistent record of the links sent in private messages. (IANS)