Facebook Message Privacy Lawsuit Plaintiffs Ask Judge For Class Cert.

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

The Facebook users who filed a putative class action lawsuit over allegations that the social media giant violated California’s Invasion of Privacy Act have asked a federal judge for Class certification.

Lead plaintiffs Matthew Campbell and Michael Hurley claim that Facebook scans private messages for URL links. According to the Facebook class action lawsuit, if the social network can find a private message contains a link to a third-party website with a Facebook “Like” plugin, the company will register up to two “Likes” for that web page.

The Facebook privacy class action lawsuit alleges that after intercepting user messages, Facebook keeps them for future use. Initially, Facebook acknowledged this action but claims that they no longer engage in this business practice.

Facebook Inc. tried to get the privacy class action lawsuit dismissed in June claiming that users were not injured by the increased “Like” count. However, the court found that the social network’s disclosures “were insufficient to show users’ express consent to interception of their private messages.”

In addition, the plaintiffs claimed that there is overwhelming evidence that Facebook actively concealed its practices from consumers. The Facebook class action lawsuit states that Facebook deliberately tried to hide their use of private messages from users.

The Facebook message privacy class action lawsuit reports that by 2012 Facebook had more than 1 billion active users worldwide. According to the plaintiffs’ calculations, this implies that there are tens of millions of Facebook users who would qualify as Class Members within the United States.

Campbell and Hurley allege that even if a very small percentage of Facebook users decided to join the potential Facebook privacy class action lawsuit, it would be more than enough to satisfy the numerosity component of a class action lawsuit.

The Facebook message class action lawsuit charges the social network giant with violating California’s Invasion of Privacy Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and California Unfair Competition Law.

If approved, the Facebook class action lawsuit would be open to all Class Members who are Facebook users located within the United States who have sent, or received from a Facebook user, private messages that included URLs in their content (and from which Facebook generated a URL attachment), from within two years before the filing of this action up through the date of the certification of the class action.

The plaintiffs are represented by Michael W. Sobol, David T. Rudolph, Melissa Gardner, Rachel Geman and Nicholas Diamand of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, Hank Bates, Allen Carney and David Slade of Carney Bates & Pulliam PLLC, Jeremy A. Lieberman, Lesley F. Portnoy and Patrick V. Dahlstrom of Pomerantz LLP and Jon Tostrud of Tostrud Law Group PC.

The Facebook Message Privacy Class Action Lawsuit is Campbell, et al. v. Facebook Inc., Case No. 4:13-cv-05996, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On Feb. 22, 2016, the lead plaintiffs filed a motion in California federal court asking again for class certification.

UPDATE 2: On Aug. 2, 2016, the plaintiffs demanded Facebook hand over more source code and documents than the company has already divulged, as well as configuration tables for certain databases.

UPDATE 3: On March 1, 2017, Facebook agreed to settle this class action lawsuit. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, the social networking giant will not offer monetary compensation to Class Members, but it has agreed to stop using Facebook users’ private message data for targeted advertising purposes.

UPDATE 4: On March 3, 2020, an objection claiming that the Facebook privacy class action provided only “worthless injunctive relief” was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.