Facebook, shaken, faces another lawsuit
It’s been more than 10 days since the Cambridge Analytica scandal exploded, and Facebook is still stuck in its worst nightmare.
The latest blow: The social media giant is being sued by three users who downloaded the social media platform’s messaging app Messenger on their Android phones.
The three users — one of whom lives in California — filed their federal lawsuit Tuesday at the in San Francisco, alleging that Facebook improperly collected their phone call and text message logs via Messenger and monetized the data for advertising purposes.
The lawsuit comes after Facebook admitted Monday that it collected phone call and text message history — but only with the permission of the user. Facebook said it never sold this data nor collected the content of text messages or calls.
“You may have seen some recent reports that Facebook has been logging people’s call and SMS (text) history without their permission,” said Facebook in a blog post. “This is not the case.”
The users write in their complaint that Facebook exploited a vulnerability found in the Facebook Messenger and Facebook Lite apps for Android. The apps included permission to gain access to the phone owner’s contact list but they used it to collect logs of phone calls and text messages, according to the complaint.
Before the vulnerability was patched in October 2017, it was collecting phone call and text message metadata as early as 2012, when the Android “Jelly Bean” OS version was introduced, according to the technology news outlet Ars Technica.
The vulnerability went viral last week when a Twitter user, Dylan McKay, tweeted about his findings after downloading a data archive from Facebook. McKay said he found his entire call history with his partner’s mother in his Facebook data.
The plaintiffs, who are seeking class action status, listed eight state and federal violations, including intrusion upon seclusion and trespass to personal property. The plaintiffs also cited the “California Constitutional Right to Privacy,” an added amendment to the state’s constitution in 1974 that expressly cited the ability to “pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy” as inalienable rights for Californians.
Facebook has weathered a barrage of lawsuits since the news that a British political data firm, Cambridge Analytica, improperly collected data of 50 million Americans and used it for political purposes, such as Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee who blew the whistle on his former employer, told a British parliamentary panel that he “absolutely” believed that the Brexit campaign also mined Facebook data and used it to successfully win the 2016 referendum for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the “breach of trust” caused by Cambridge Analytica. But Facebook received numerous lawsuits as of Wednesday. Among them are some from several shareholders, including one based in San Francisco; Facebook users, including one woman asking $500 million in damages; and Illinois’ Cook County government for allegedly violating its state’s fraud law.