Facebook is facing a lawsuit for allegedly scanning private messages

We know: Despite its best attempts at proving otherwise, Facebook and privacy have an oil/water reputation – the latest legal news regarding the company won’t help that any, either. A California judge recently ruled that The Social Network will face a class-action lawsuit following accusations that it peeked at users’ private messages without consent to deliver targeted advertising. 

Facebook Inc must face a class action lawsuit accusing it of violating its users’ privacy by scanning the content of messages they send to other users for advertising purposes, a U.S. judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, on Tuesday dismissed some state-law claims against the social media company but largely denied Facebook’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit. Facebook had argued that the alleged scanning of its users’ messages was covered by an exception under the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act for interceptions by service providers occurring in the ordinary course of business. But Hamilton said Facebook had “not offered a sufficient explanation of how the challenged practice falls within the ordinary course of its business.”