The leadership of the largest social network in the world has recently had to face the largest collective action filed against Facebook. It's no joke, because more than 20,000 people joined the lawsuit.
In just four days, 20,000 like-minded people joined the author of the suit, Austrian Max Schrems. Max sued Facebook on account of the fact that the American social network violates many European laws protecting the personal information of users. The lawsuit points also affect the fact that the social network secretly examines its users and also keeps track of which sites they visit on the web. All these data, according to the plaintiff, may well be transferred to the US National Security Agency under the PRISM program, with which he categorically disagrees.
Max Schrems himself is a law student, and this is probably the first serious matter in his career. Anyway, over 20,000 people from 100 different countries have already taken the side of Max. Since the processing of applications constantly coming to Max takes some time, most likely, the real number of claimants is already close to 25,000 people.
“The huge number of registered plaintiffs will certainly be a very important factor for Facebook,” Schrems says in a statement. - The number of applications from new people exceeded all my wildest expectations. With so many plaintiffs, the chance to win this case is greatly enhanced. ”
This lawsuit is not aimed at receiving giant compensation from Facebook, but primarily to ensure that the company revised the rules for access to personal data of various special services and changed its policy in accordance with European laws on information protection. If the case is won, each of the tens of thousands of plaintiffs will receive only 500 euros of compensation, 20% of which will be spent on legal expenses. Max Schrems himself on the results of the claim in general should not receive any compensation. For him, this lawsuit, rather, a matter of principle, rather than a way to cash in.
If the court recognizes the claims of the plaintiffs lawful, then Facebook will be obliged to pay them 1.25 million euros, which is a mere penny for a company of this magnitude. But, on the other hand, social network lawyers will have to sweat to resolve issues with the protection of personal data of their users in Europe.
The article is based on materials .
Comments
Post a Comment