Amended Suit Claims Facebook Disclosed Personal Data to Advertisers
An amended lawsuit claims Facebook disclosed users’ personal information to advertisers when it began embedding additional data in website addresses in February.
The suit by two Facebook users claims advertisers could access the embedded data in URLs to learn more about website users who clicked on their ads. The amended suit claims the data revealed not only the last Facebook page visited by the user, but also information that could identify the user, Online Media Daily reports. The suit claims violations of federal and state privacy laws and seeks class action status.
The amended complaint was filed Monday in federal court in San Jose, Calif., by David Gould and Mike Robertson. “This unauthorized disclosure of a person’s identity and what Facebook page they were viewing could have the effect of revealing to advertisers confidential and sometimes highly sensitive information, including a user’s private interests,” the suit says.
The complaint says Facebook started embedding the identity information in so-called referrer headers in February, but the social networking site stopped the practice in May after receiving media questions about the practice.
