Festivities came early to Facebook this year, with word that the social networking giant is facing a class action lawsuit in the States over its alleged scanning of private messages.

Having now reached a US District Court, the suit, originally brought in December last year, claimed that Facebook allegedly scanned its users messages and then used that data for advertising purposes. This breaches the Electronic Communications Privacy Act over there. 

Documents allege Facebook is also storing all links sent in private messages and later using that to sell you things, which is sort of what Google does with your email given that it is also a free service but that doesn’t work well for the Outrage Complex so we’ll leave that argument to one side.

If the class action succeeds, any Facebook user in California who sent a link could technically stand to gain up to $10,000 in damages. Ouch.

Ah, America.

Via News.com.au

Image via Getty/Chris Jackson

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