After six months of negotiating, Facebook has agreed to scale back on the amount of snooping it does, in order to bring a class action lawsuit to a close.
Lead plaintiffs Matthew Campbell and Michael Hurley sued in Federal Court in 2013, claiming Facebook scanned its users’ private Facebook messages for URLs to third-party websites and used the information to generate “likes” for those websites and targeted advertising aimed at users. The plaintiffs said that scanning private messages without consent violated the federal Wiretap Act and California’s Invasion of Privacy Act.
