A lawsuit against Facebook has been filed in a US court, alleging that the social networking giant Facebook may have violated federal privacy laws by scanning private messages.
The allegations center around Facebook's practice of scanning and logging URLs sent through the site's private messaging system. Those scans serve a number of purposes, including anti-malware protection and industry-standard searches for child pornography, but may also be used for marketing purposes.
The plaintiffs allege that Facebook routinely scans those URLs for advertising and other user-targeting data — and claim that by maintaining those records in a searchable form, Facebook is violating both the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California Invasion of Privacy Act. Facebook disputes that private messages are scanned in bulk, and maintains the URL data is anonymized and only used in aggregate form.