Facebook Class Action Challenges Collection of Android Users’ Call, Text Data

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Facebook Inc. is facing another class action lawsuit accusing it of collecting and storing Android smartphone users’ call and text data without their knowledge or consent.

Plaintiff Leland Tracy filed the Facebook class action lawsuit Monday in California federal court and alleges that Facebook users who install apps such as Facebook Messenger and Facebook Lite on their Android smartphones were not informed that their calls and text messages would be logged on Facebook’s servers.

“In the Android versions of Facebook’s mobile application, Facebook has collected and stored information in a scope and manner beyond that which users knowingly authorized, and the practice is ongoing,” Tracy alleges in the Facebook Messenger class action lawsuit.

“This activity includes accessing users’ call and text histories, including, but not limited to, metadata such as the names and numbers of persons contacted, the times of such contacts, and the lengths of such contacts,” the Facebook class action lawsuit says.

Tracy claims that the Android operating system for mobile devices has allowed Facebook apps to obtain users’ call and text data without fully disclosing that the apps would access all of this data and send it to Facebook’s private servers.

The Facebook class action lawsuit points to a March 24, 2018 article posted on the technology news website ArsTechnica.com, which first alerted consumers that Android smartphone users who installed Facebook apps likely had their call and text communications scraped and stored on Facebook’s servers.

The information that was reportedly collected about these communications included phone numbers, identities, date and time of communications, and the length of the communications. The collection of this data was reportedly set as part of the default installation of the Facebook apps, but Facebook did not provide notice of the data collection in a manner that users would understand, the Facebook class action lawsuit alleges.

“By utilizing such data collection methods, Facebook has been able to amass a set of data matching people to their phone numbers, but also matching people to one another,” the Facebook class action lawsuit says.

“By matching the phone numbers to other information, knowable by Facebook.com posts and other available information, Facebook can map relationships and, to a degree, the nature and type of relationships between affected Android users.”

Tracy says he was not given enough data to knowingly opt in to such a data collection program, and that he would not have opted in if he had been adequately informed that Facebook would collect such data.

According to the Facebook class action lawsuit, the social network had more than 2.2 billion active users by the end of 2017. Millions of users access Facebook through their Android phones, Tracy says.

Tracy filed the Facebook Android app class action lawsuit on behalf of himself and other U.S. citizens with Facebook accounts and whose call and text data was obtained by Facebook through the Facebook, Facebook Messenger or Facebook Lite apps on their Android cell phones.

The Facebook class action lawsuit asserts claims for violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law, negligence, intentional misrepresentation, unjust enrichment, invasion of privacy, violations of the Stored Communications Act, and conversion.

A similar Facebook Android app class action lawsuit was filed last month in California federal court.

Tracy is represented by Francis J. “Casey” Flynn Jr. and Kevin S. Hannon of the Hannon Law Firm LLC.

The Facebook Android App Class Action Lawsuit is Leland Tracy v. Facebook Inc., Case No. 3:18-cv-02128, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.