Facebook Cookie Tracking Class Action Lawsuit

Facebook is in trouble – once again – for violating its users’ privacy, this time for illegally using cookies to track its users’ online activities. The latest Facebook class action lawsuit, filed by an Austin Facebook user who’s also a lawyer, is the third filed in the past two weeks after the social media website publicly acknowledged that it had fixed a cookie problem in September.

Plaintiff Michael Singley alleges in the Facebook cookie tracking class action lawsuit that Facebook violated the federal wiretap act by using electronic “cookies” to improperly track the Internet browsing patterns of its users. Cookies are small files placed on computers by websites and online services to identify users and track them for marketing purposes. The class action lawsuit further alleges Facebook broke the law by selling information of its users’ Internet behavior to other companies, such as marketing and ad companies who use that information to better target online consumers.

The Austin Facebook class lawsuit, like the other two suits, is seeking to represent the estimated 150 million Facebook users in the United States as a collective whole.

The Facebook cookie class action lawsuits were filed after an Australian blogger exposed that Facebook had installed cookies on his computer that tracked his browsing patterns online, even after he logged out of the Facebook site.

 

Facebook acknowledged the problem in a September statement but said it had been fixed, saying, “There was no security or privacy breach – Facebook did not store or use any information it should not have.” Facebook said it only used cookies to provide personalized content to users and to protect their security.

The Austin Facebook cookie tracking class action lawsuit claims Facebook is subject to statutory damages of up to $10,000 per violation of the wiretap act in addition to punitive damages and a potential court injunction against the company. 

Facebook joins a long list of online companies facing class action lawsuits for fraudulently circumventing users’ Web-browser privacy settings to collect personal information without their permission and sharing it with other companies. Amazon, Interclick, Quantcast and Clearspring have all been hit with flash cookie class action lawsuits. 

David Jacobs from the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington said one purpose of the federal wiretap act is to limit access to the computers and electronic information of computer users.

“It is not really surprising that this kind of secret monitoring would prompt a lawsuit. These are important questions, and the courts should consider them,” Jacobs said.