Facebook Faces Class-Action

Last December, Facebook changed up privacy policies to which users had grown accustomed. Unless individuals went in and made the necessary settings adjustments to their profiles, certain information that was previously accessible only to online contacts—photos, friend listings, and product or organization endorsements, for example—were now available by default to the general public.

It created a backlash among some in the blogosphere. Now, months later, it has resulted in a class action suit filed against Facebook in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, computerworld.com reports.


According to the site, the suit against Facebook claims that “Changes to the privacy settings that Facebook implemented and represented to increase User privacy had the outright opposite effect of resulting in the public dissemination of personal information that was originally private." It also calls Facebook’s communications of the changes "misleading, confusing and disingenuous."

Facebook Director of Policy Communications Barry Schnitt, meanwhile, tells computerworld.com that Facebook’s announcement and education campaign surrounding the changes was “transparent, consistent with people's expectations, and well within the law.”


In separate but related news, Facebook recently revamped one other aspect of its privacy policy: users now have the opportunity to control who gets to see information posted by the ubiquitous third-party applications that populate the site, according to The Tech Chronicles, a San Francisco Chronicle blog. As that blog points out, privacy issues are becoming more and more of a concern as the scope of social networking continues to expand. Just this January, Facebook surpassed Yahoo.com in terms of monthly unique visitors.