Facebook lawsuit gets support from 60,000 users
22 Aug 2014
An Austrian law student said his class-action suit against Facebook for alleged privacy violations had received support from 60,000 users and passed its first legal review, Reuters reported.
Earler this month, Austrian law student and privacy advocate Max Schrems brought a class action lawsuit against Facebook, at a commercial court in Vienna over privacy violations (See: Austrian student sues Facebook over privacy violations).
Schrems, who already has a case involving the social network pending at the European Court of Justice, is claiming damages €500 per user from the US company.
The $195-billion company boasts a 1.32 billion strong user base.
According to Schrems, the Vienna Regional Court had ordered Facebook Ireland to respond within four weeks to his claims, including that the social network aided the US National Security Agency in mining the personal data of Facebook users.
Schrems closed the list of plaintiffs earlier this month after 25,000 people joined the campaign, as his legal team needed to verify and administer each one.