Austrian student sues Facebook over privacy violations

An Austrian law student has brought a class action lawsuit against Facebook, at a commercial court in Vienna over privacy violations, IANS reports.

Privacy activist Max Schrems, who runs an activist group called Europe v Facebook, has claimed damages of €500 per user for the violations by the social network, urging the 1.32 billion Facebook users to join him in his legal battle, according to media reports, Sunday.

"For this class action lawsuit, we have chosen basic or obvious violations of the law - the privacy policy, participation in the PRISM programme, Facebook's graph search, apps on Facebook, tracking on other web pages and 'big data' systems that spy on users or the non-compliance with access requests," Schrems wrote on Facebook Class Action website.

The legal proceedings would run as a class action because the Austrian law allows a group of people to transfer their financial claims to a single person.

The 26-year old student was quoted as saying that the move was aimed at making Facebook finally operate lawfully in the area of data protection, according to IANS.

According to Max Schrems, his latest legal action was a "David and Goliath lawsuit" that "could ultimately be the largest class and privacy action ever taken in Europe."

He told the Daily Mail that users loved to complain constantly about data protection problems in Europe, and now it was also time to enforce users' fundamental rights.

According to the newspaper, Schrems was "claiming damages of €500 per supporter" of his suit filed against Facebook Ireland, the company's subsidiary and legal channel for all non-US and Canadian claimants.

The paper said the main thrust of the lawsuit was Schrems' claim that Facebook Ireland was in breach of European law on users' data, and that it violated rights by tracking internet use on external sites including the use of 'Like' buttons.

The suit, however also criticised Facebook's use of "big data" analysis of user behaviour and further criticised the social networking giant for "allegedly supporting the US Prism surveillance program - the National Security Agency's secret monitoring and data mining exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden."

Facebook is currently under investigation by the European Court of Justice over allegations that it gave information it possessed about European users to the NSA.

Schrems had also taken on Facebook Ireland in 2011, when he demanded and received a copy of his own user data held by the social network in accordance with EU data protection law, according to the Austrian English-language news site The Local.