Judge dismisses Facebook objections to lawsuit over scanning messages

A judge in the US has ruled that a lawsuit over Facebook’s scanning of private messages must go ahead. Facebook had requested that the case be dropped and the company invoked an exception in the law, but the judge did not agree.

Facebook objected to the case by citing an exception in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. It would state that interception by service providers is allowed if this is part of the standard activities of a company. The judge rejected the request, according to Reuters, because Facebook “had not made it sufficiently clear why what the company is accused of falls under its standard business.”

This is a so-called class action lawsuit, which users who feel their privacy has been compromised can join. The case was launched in 2013 with the claim that Facebook scanned the content of private messages for links to sites. Each link would then be added to profiles as a ‘Like’, after which users would receive targeted advertisements based on the Likes. In October 2012, Facebook would have stopped this practice.