Facebook is facing a class action lawsuit over the revelations that it logged text messages and phone calls via its smartphone apps.
In the lawsuit filed in Facebook’s home of the northern district of California, the primary plaintiff, John Condelles III, states that the social network’s actions “presents several wrongs, including a consumer bait-and-switch, an invasion of privacy, wrongful monitoring of minors and potential attacks on privileged communications” such as those between doctor and patient.
Facebook collected the logs of text messages and calls, including the recipients and duration of the communications, through its apps for Android including Messenger when users opted into being able to send SMS from the app or give access to their contact lists.
“Facebook has collected and stored information in a scope and manner beyond that which users knowingly authorised. The practice is ongoing,” states the filing first reported by the Register.
The extent of the collection was revealed when users began downloading and sifting through the data Facebook held on them following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The plaintiffs allege that Facebook’s collection of the data from users’ phones breaches California’s Unfair Competition Law on three counts – including fraudulent business practice – in addition to the Consumer Legal Remedies Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
The filing states: “The terms of service and privacy notice materials do not inform (and in the past have not informed) the ordinary and reasonably attentive Facebook user that installing the application on a mobile device will result in the logging of all the user’s phone and text communications — including recipients, dates of communication, length of communication and mode of communication — on Facebook’s servers for Facebook’s own use.”
Until 2012, any Android application that could access contacts could also access phone and text logs, but the operating system did not explicitly notify users of that fact.
“By granting this access, Android users were also automatically and unknowingly granting Facebook permission to ‘scrape’, or automatically gather, Android users’ call and text logs,” states the lawsuit. “In other words, Facebook scraped years’ worth of call and text data, including whether the call was ‘incoming’ ‘outgoing’, or ‘missed;’ the data and time of each call; the number dialled; the individual called; and the duration of each call.”
Condelles is seeking at least $5m and to turn the suit into a class action across the US.
Facebook is also facing a class action lawsuit from both British and US lawyers as part of a case against the social network, Cambridge Analytica and two other companies for allegedly misusing the personal data of 71 million people.
Facebook did not immediately respond to request for comment.
