A class-action lawsuit filed earlier this week targets Facebook and eight of the participants in Beacon, its ill-fated advertising product that shared information about third-party site activity with the social network. The set of twenty plaintiffs, mostly residents of Texas, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday. Named as defendants are Facebook, as well as current or former Beacon participants Blockbuster, Fandango (owned by Comcast), Overstock.com, STA Travel, Zappos, Hotwire (owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp), and GameFly. A Facebook representative told CNET News on Thursday that the company had not yet actually been served with the lawsuit, and that its legal team consequently did not have a formal statement at the time. STA Travel, Gamefly, and Overstock all declined comment; none of the other defendants could be immediately reached. "Until we're served, we're not being sued, so we don't have any comment," Overstock general counsel Mark Griffin told CNET News. Beacon gained almost immediate notoriety when Facebook unveiled it as part of its Facebook Ads announcement last fall. Privacy advocates, most notably liberal activist group MoveOn.org , lambasted the program for not allowing users to disable it easily. Facebook has since modified the program and the controversy has wound down. But in the lawsuit, the plaintiffs point to the window of time before Facebook instituted t ...
Anytime
A class-action lawsuit filed earlier this week targets Facebook and eight of the participants in Beacon, its ill-fated advertising product that shared information about third-party site activity with the social network. The set of twenty plaintiffs, mostly residents of Texas, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday. Named as defendants are Facebook, as well as current or former Beacon participants Blockbuster, Fandango (owned by Comcast), Overstock.com, STA Travel, Zappos, Hotwire (owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp), and GameFly. A Facebook representative told CNET News on Thursday that the company had not yet actually been served with the lawsuit, and that its legal team consequently did not have a formal statement at the time. STA Travel, Gamefly, and Overstock all declined comment; none of the other defendants could be immediately reached. "Until we're served, we're not being sued, so we don't have any comment," Overstock general counsel Mark Griffin told CNET News. Beacon gained almost immediate notoriety when Facebook unveiled it as part of its Facebook Ads announcement last fall. Privacy advocates, most notably liberal activist group MoveOn.org , lambasted the program for not allowing users to disable it easily. Facebook has since modified the program and the controversy has wound down. But in the lawsuit, the plaintiffs point to the window of time before Facebook instituted t ...