Facebook sued over privacy issue

John Graham, a 42 years old lawyer, has filled the suit in U.S. District Court in Kansas on Wednesday. Graham did not comment on the suit he filled and referred them to his lawyer who didn’t comment either. Also the spokesperson of Facebook, Andrew Noyes said that the firm is not commenting on the issue right now.

However, according to the experts in these types of cases, petitioners typically lose because it is difficult to prove the harms of such cookies. Experts added that previously also courts have rejected these types of petitions because it was found that ‘the cookies are not wiretaps’.

Initially, when the cookie issue was raised, Facebook issued the statement that they do not store any information which can affect the privacy of its users. Facebook in the statement also said that their main aim is to provide security to its users and that is why they store cookies and they do not track its users with it.

According to the statement Facebook said, “Three of these cookies on some users' computers inadvertently included unique identifiers when the user had logged out of Facebook. However, we did not store these identifiers for logged out users. Therefore, we could not have used this information for tracking or any other purpose.”

John Graham, in the petition, has asked the federal court to decide whether capturing the data and storing the information is correct or not. Graham also asked the federal court to prohibit Facebook from acquiring data when the user is not logged in. A consumer advocate David Jacobs has supported Graham and said that the question put up is very important and court should have a look at it.

Privacy groups including Electronic Privacy and American Civil Liberties Union sent a joint letter to Federal Trade commission for investigating the way Facebook collects the data of its user with the changes it have made recently.

Changes made by Facebook

In past few weeks Facebook has made some changes to its interface which has drawn some serious security concerns. The new features which under the spotlight are timeline and open graph which share the user’s information to a broader audience which wasn’t the case earlier.

However, at that time also Facebook denied the allegations and said that they introduced this platform so that the users can easily share their information. Andrew Noyes Facebook spokesperson at that time said, “We offer numerous controls both before and after the fact, all the sharing is opt in and easily controllable.”