Facebook Faces Yet Another Class Action Lawsuit

Facebook is facing yet another class action lawsuit for tracking people even when they have completely logged out of their Facebook account. This new lawsuit alleges that Facebook violated the federal wiretap laws.

As if facing lawsuit in several states wasn’t bad enough, Facebook is now facing a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accuses Facebook of violating it’s own privacy policy. According to Facebook’s privacy policy they are not supposed to track people’s post-log-out activity. People have argued that even after constant complaints Facebook continues to ignore this issue.

Facebook is notorious for not only privacy violations but also security-related issues. The term “Facebook privacy” is considered an oxymoron by privacy advocates and security professionals consider Facebook security as a joke. Did you know that Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s fan page was hacked in January 2011? Because social networking is currently a fad, people will continue to use Web sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace and unfortunately suffer the consequences if they believe anything they post can be kept confidential. It can’t. Using a social networking site and expecting to be safe and secure is like taking a shower and expecting to stay dry. It’s not going to happen. The only sure way to keep your privacy is to not post confidential information on any social networking site. Period!

According to a study 40% of all Facebook profiles are fake. In fact, Facebook removes 20,000 profiles every day. Researchers at VeriSign’s iDefense group discovered that a hacker stole 1.5 million Facebook accounts and was selling usernames and passwords in an underground hacker forum for $25-$45. Imagine how many of those 1.5 million posted their full name, business (or personal) address, phone number, hours of operation, and of course pictures on Facebook. Obviously, identity theft is a serious concern for Facebook users.

Facebook is expected to reach 1 billion user profiles in August of 2012. That sounds pretty impressive. Never mind the fact that 400,000 million of those user profiles are likely to be fake. Chances are Faceboo0k will continue to face class action lawsuits and people will continue to use Facebook, even though according to a survey 60% of Facebook members threaten to quit in 2010 over privacy concerns.