The US Court of Appeals in San Francisco has recently dismissed claims made previously by Facebook users about the social network's alleged dissemination of their online activity information, Bloomberg said. According to the complainants, Facebook's acts have defrauded customers and in the process, has breached its own user agreement.
The lawsuit against Facebook, Google and other Internet companies is an indication that users are now aware of how much of their personal information is being shared. Google is currently fending off a lawsuit over claims that its Street View feature and the skimming over customer emails using their Gmail service violated user privacy. Google reportedly failed to convince federal judges in California to reject the claims lodged against them over its data collection measures.
On the other hand, Bloomberg said Facebook has stepped up its efforts to show that it is concerned about user privacy and data usage in order to retain its over 1.2 billion active users. Lawyers have said at a January hearing that some of the privacy claims are based on policies and practices Facebook and Zynga has long since changed. For example, Facebook said it already took action to prevent user information from being shared to third-party companies after it found that some of them had transferred user ID numbers on its platform, which it said was a clear violation of company policy. The social network has also reached an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission over complaints about how it failed to protect user privacy or disclose how their data could be used. From that agreement, Facebook is to be subject under an independent review of company practices and is prohibited from making deceptive claims about its privacy measures. In November last year, Facebook removed language about how it could use teen's content in ads.
Attorney Kassra Nassiri for Facebook users, said of yesterday's rulings, "(Other) courts have rejected breach-of-contract claims. This is a very important decision."
Facebook spokeswoman Debbie Frost said in an email, "We are pleased that the court affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiffs' federal and state statutory claims."
