Lane v. Facebook, Inc.
| Lane v. Facebook | |
|---|---|
| United States District Court for the Northern District of California | |
| Full case name | Sean Lane, et al. v. Facebook, Inc., Blockbuster Inc., Fandango Inc., Hotwire, Inc., STA Travel Inc., Overstock.com, Inc., Zappos.com, GameFly, Inc. |
| Date decided | March 17, 2010 |
| Judge sitting | Richard G. Seeborg |
| Case holding | |
| Settled under court order; Facebook shut down its Beacon Service and created a $9.5M privacy fund. | |
| Keywords | |
| internet privacy | |
Lane v. Facebook was a class-action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California regarding internet privacy and social media. In December 2007, Facebook launched Beacon, which resulted in users' private information being posted on Facebook without consent. A simultaneous class-action lawsuit in Texas, Harris v. Blockbuster Inc., also alleged injuries based on Facebook's Beacon. Facebook ended up terminating the Beacon program, and created a $9.5 million fund for privacy and security. There was no money awarded to Facebook users that were affected negatively by the Beacon program.
Plaintiff Sean Lane represented the class of Facebook users who had visited Beacon sites. In 2007, he purchased an intended surprise diamond ring from Overstock.com for his wife. Without his knowledge, this purchase was broadcast to hundreds of people in his network on Facebook, including his wife. The Beacon feature was opt-out; in order to disable the feature, one had to understand the privacy controls on Facebook as well as all of its 40+ affiliate sites. There was also no option to turn off the service permanently. For Facebook, the feature was intended to be a "completely new way of advertising online."
The Beacon feature remained turned on by default, until December 2007, when Facebook instituted new privacy controls. The lawsuit concerns the window of time before those easier-to-understand controls were implemented.
The feature was heavily criticized by security experts and privacy advocates. Security researchers found that Beacon transmitted data even if the user was logged out of Facebook. MoveOn.org, a civic action political group, posted a petition objecting to the new program, that gathered the signatures of over 50,000 Facebook members in 10 days.
The class that the plaintiffs represented were all Facebook users who visited Beacon affiliate sites, a class of about 3.6 million users. The law firm involved was also behind the lawsuits involving digital rights management on the Amazon Kindle, Spore, and the Sony rootkit.
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