Facebook faces Lawsuit for Violating Privacy Rights

Thousands of Facebook users alongside lead plaintiff Max Schrems are demanding compensation. Can it prove a big challenge for popular social networking site?

A lawsuit has been filed against social networking site Facebook for violating privacy and collecting the personal data of its users.

The lawsuit which was filed by Austrian Max Schrems claims that tracking of personal data is a violation of privacy rights and the mass surveillance should be stopped immediately in order to protect the rights of the users. The 27 years old law graduate considers that the sharing of user’s personal data with either the business organizations or government agencies is objectionable and worthy to be filed in the court. Schrems also alleged Facebook for providing personal information of the users to the U.S. National Security Agency’s for its program named PRISM.

The complaint has been logged against Facebook headquarters in Dublin, which is responsible for handling all of its users residing outside the USA and Canada and the figure is enormous. It is about 1.35 billion which make up about 80% of the Facebook users.

According to a Reuters report approximately 25,000 users have accused social networking site for breaching their privacy rights and have demanded 500 Euros ($538) for compensation. But it is not the end. Thousands of more users are lined up and eagerly waiting to join proceeding in later stages.

On the first day of hiring in Vienna, Facebook attorney tried to convince the court judge to not admit the lawsuit. According to the Nikolaus Pitkowitz the suit is not something which can be heard in the court.

Schrems, on the other hand, believes that filing a class action lawsuit in a civil court is justified since social networking site has breached European laws regarding user’s data. He claims that defendants are applying same old delaying tactics which are mostly used to halt a lawsuit filed in the court. Such attempts often result in the plaintiff withdrawing the lawsuit as continuous delay leads to waste of money as well as the precious time.

“This is a typical strategy because most consumers will run out of time and money.” Schrems said.

Schrems believes that the filing of the case is not about getting money and having rich, it is about the protection of the fundamental rights and the application of the privacy laws which already exist in Europe.  The issue is just enforcing them so no can do whatever he wants.