Facebook Sued For Alleged Private Message Monitoring and Data Mining

Forum Moderators: not2easy

Message Too Old, No Replies

Facebook Sued For Alleged Private Message Monitoring and Data Mining

engine

10:52 am on Jan 3, 2014 (gmt 0)

I would have thought it good practice to monitor the links for malware, illegal link sharing, and scams. Sharing data with a third party is a different matter, unless it's covered by Facebook's TOS.

Facebook is facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it monitors users' private messages.

The lawsuit claims that when users share a link to another website via a private message, Facebook scans it to profile the sender's web activity.

It alleges that Facebook systematically intercepts messages to mine user data and profits by sharing it with data aggregators, advertisers and marketers.

Facebook said the allegations were "without merit".Facebook Sued For Alleged Private Message Monitoring and Data Mining [bbc.co.uk]

weeks

12:14 pm on Jan 3, 2014 (gmt 0)

This lawsuit is even more bogus than FB. There are likely legit claims against FB regarding sharing user's private data, but this isn't one of them.

And the idea of "private" within FB is laughable in any case.

incrediBILL

9:32 am on Jan 4, 2014 (gmt 0)

Facebook scans it to profile the sender's web activity.

They are correct, there's a bot that checks ALL links posted on facebook.

SO. WHAT.

They use a spider called "facebookexternalhit" which they describe here:
[facebook.com...]

Facebook allows its users to send links to interesting web content to other Facebook users. Part of how this works on the Facebook system involves the temporary display of certain images or details related to the web content, such as the title of the webpage or the embed tag of a video. Our system retrieves this information only after a user provides us with a link.

Sheesh.

The real headline here should be:
"US Law Allows Any Misguided Misinformed Moron To Sue Deep Pockets Looking For Handouts"

Sgt_Kickaxe

11:09 pm on Jan 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

It's 2014, everything is monitored. Everything. Wrap your head around it.

Solution: if you don't like being monitored on Facebook, stop using Facebook.