A U.S. District just has ruled that Facebook cannot dismiss claims that it scanned users' messages for advertising purposes. The company will have to face a class action lawsuit accusing it of violating user privacy. Reuters reports:
U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, on Tuesday dismissed some state-law claims against the social media company but largely denied Facebook's bid to dismiss the lawsuit.
Facebook had argued that the alleged scanning of its users' messages was covered by an exception under the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act for interceptions by service providers occurring in the ordinary course of business.
But Hamilton said Facebook had "not offered a sufficient explanation of how the challenged practice falls within the ordinary course of its business."
The lawsuit filed in 2013 by Facebook user Matthew Campbell alleges that Facebook scans the contents of private messages looking for links to other websites, which would then be used to deliver more target advertising to its users. And while according to Facebook, and Tuesday's court ruling, the company ceased this practice in October 2012, the company does not defend that they do not continue to search through private messages as a part of their everyday practices. The company claims that some analyses of messages continue, as a precaution, to better protect users against any spam and viruses that may be embedded in the content.
