You can now join the Austrian law student, Max Schrems, who appealed to a billion Facebook users on Friday, in a class action lawsuit against Facebook’s alleged breach of user’s privacy. Schrems elevated the privacy case, which is already pending in the “European Court of Justice by filing a claim at Vienna’s commercial court and invited other users to join the action at www.fbclaim.com using Facebook login.
Under Austrian law, a group of people may move their financial claims to a single person which in this case in Schrems. He is claiming a damage of $670 per user for privacy violation, including Prism program of U.S National Security Agency which mined personal data of Facebook users and other web services.
He is also seeking injunction under EU data protection law and said, “Our aim is to make Facebook operate lawfully in the area of data protection”. Users from anywhere except Canada and U.S can join the Austrian case as Facebook runs its operations from fellow EU country Ireland.
A specialist investor will bear the legal costs if Schrems loses and will take 20 percent of damages if he wins which means users can join at no financial risk. Facebook came under the fire before also for violating data protection laws. Recently, Britain’s watchdog investigated in 2012 on unwitting users and tried to alter their emotional state to see if postings turned out be negative or positive.
Facebook has 1.32 billion users and posted 61 per cent increase in revenue in the second quarter, which was the result of mobile advertising, sending its share to record high and valuing the company at $200 billion.
