A class-action lawsuit filed in California court on Thursday charges Facebook, Blockbuster, Fandango, and a handful of other companies with violating online privacy laws in relation to Facebook’s Beacon system.
The lawsuit claims Facebook gathered online users' activity without asking them if they wanted that information to be posted to their profiles, which is nothing new, considering the amount of heat Facebook has taken over the entire Beacon initiative.
"By the time any user was notified that Facebook was (at a minimum), an observing party to the transaction, and that Facebook was asking for an approval to publicly broadcast identifying information regarding the event, personally identifying information had already been communicated to Facebook," the suit alleges.
The suit also claims that although Facebook has made Beacon an opt-out program, it’s too difficult for users to do so, because they are forced to visit each of Beacon's 44 affiliate Web site to do just that.
To add even more fuel to the Beacon fire, the lawsuit also claims that Facebook retrieved data on all users who had any impact on the program, regardless of whether they were Facebook users or not.
“Thus, non-Facebook persons who utilized the Facebook Beacon Activated Affiliate Websites were not told that their transaction, and indeed, every transaction they engaged in upon the Website was being communicated to a third party (Facebook) with whom they had no relationship whatsoever," the suit claims.
Facebook claims that it has yet to receive the lawsuit, but will consult it closely to see if it has any merit.