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Facebook was hit with another potential class action lawsuit last week for allegedly using minors’ names and images in ads without their parents’ permission. This is at least the fourth class action lawsuit filed against the social networking service for using underage Facebook users in advertisements without their consent.
The latest Facebook class action lawsuit was brought in federal district court in the Southern District of Illinois on behalf of two underage Facebook users in Illinois. Other cases are pending in federal court in New York and California and in state court in Los Angeles.
The lawsuits take aim at Facebook’s “Like” button, which transforms people who “Like” particular brands or ads into endorsers of these companies by sharing that information and their likeness with users’ friends. The class action lawsuits argue this violates various state laws banning the use of people’s likenesses in ads without their consent, or in the case of minors, their parents’ consents.
“One way in which Facebook works to increase its user-base and response rate and thus its advertising revenues is by using the names and likenesses of its users to advertise its services and other products,” the most recent Facebook class action lawsuit states. “Facebook accomplishes this by collecting personal information from its users, (name, picture, friends, brand preferences), combining that information with additional information provided by its paid advertisers and applying that data to Facebook designed templates to produce its ‘targeted’ or ‘enhanced’ advertisements.”
Even if users don’t click on the “Like” button, they may still have their personal information collected and sold. A class action lawsuit filed last month alleges Facebook plants tracking cookies on the computers of both members and non-members of Facebook if they simply visit a website with a “Like” button. This data is then “priced, bought and sold in discrete units for marketing and other purposes,” the class action lawsuit says.
Facebook, of course, is vigorously defending the privacy class action lawsuits.
UPDATE: The Facebook minor ad class action lawsuit was dismissed on March 26, 2014.
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UPDATE: The Facebook minor ad class action lawsuit was dismissed on March 26, 2014: http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/21760-facebook-dodges-class-action-lawsuit-ads-featuring-minors/