Facebook Hit With Another Privacy Class Action Lawsuit

Facebook is facing yet another class action lawsuit over privacy violations. This time the proposed class action lawsuit is over its new “Instant Personalization” social network tool, which uses data mining “to automatically and without notice capture private information of its members” and post it on unaffiliated websites.

According to the class action lawsuit, this social plug-in allows third-party websites to access users’ personal information when users click on their websites. “Once Instant Personalization was activated, Facebook accessed its user’s account and posted the user’s profile information on unrelated sites such as Pandora, Yelp and Microsoft’s Docs.” Facebook added Instant Personalization to every user’s account without informing them about their option to opt-out, without warning users that their information would be posted to unrelated third-party websites, and without asking their permission to do so. After April 23, Facebook changed its privacy settings so that Instant Personalization requires an opt-in setting to be activated, “however, Facebook still discloses users’ information to third-party websites through friends who have not disabled the service.”

If approved, the class action lawsuit will cover all Facebook users who had accounts prior to April 18, 2010 and who had the Instant Personalization social networking tool added to their accounts.