October 11th, 2012

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Facebook Offers a Revised $20 Million Privacy Settlement

The latest news is reporting that on October 6, 2012, Facebook proposed a revised 20 million settlement in a class-action privacy lawsuit. The lawsuit was first filed in 2011. “We believe the revised settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate and responds to the issues raised previously by the court,” said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes.

The settlement is essentially offering up to $10 each to nearly 125 million affected users, reports Reuters.  If there is any money left over from the settlement (after the $10 or less claims, legal bills and other claims are paid), the residual money will most likely be donated to various internet privacy groups.

This privacy violation lawsuit is the result of Facebook users’ names and faces (via profiles) shown as endorsements in Facebook’s Sponsored Stories advertisements, which appear in the upper right hand side of its main page newsfeed.  These non-permissive endorsements of brands were automatically shown in Sponsored Stories if users simply liked a brand’s page.  Many users found this to be a huge violation of privacy. Their information was being shared with third party advertising firms and they were not given an option to opt-out of the feature.

The re-submitted settlement is currently pending approval from a judge.

Companies need to be responsible for their customer’s privacy.  Online marketing has had opt-in and opt-out guidelines for over a decade.  Facebook better get their act together or face more lawsuits like this one.

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