Facebook is facing another legal issue because of the data it collected from user’s phone and sold to the highest bidder. The lawsuit is filed in California by a company called Six4Three. It said that Facebook has used various methods to collect user’s personal information so that it can use that information for commercial use like targetting ads for election campaigns.
The case is based on emails and messages between Facebook executives and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself. The information revealed that the CEO himself was involved in the data harvesting. Facebook has faced a lot of issues since the news came out of the Cambridge Analytica case. The lawsuit filed by a startup, Six4Three, which is now dysfunctional was filed over a defunct app Pikinis. Facebook removed the app after updating its privacy policy in 2015 which said that no third party developer will be allowed to access a user’s friend data.
The Facebook spokesperson said in response to the lawsuit, “When we changed our policy in 2015, we gave all third-party developers ample notice of material platform changes that could have impacted their applications. but Six4Three chose not to work with us. The allegations that they have outlined are meritless and designed to detract from their complaint. We have made it clear that we will fight this lawsuit and protect users’ data.” The Facebook representative has made it clear that Facebook is not logging user’s call and text history without their consent and that the allegations by Six4Three are baseless. However, this will be decided by the court in the coming days. Previously, Mark admitted that Facebook Messanger app can scan user’s data and keeps a log of it, but it asks for user’s permission before doing that.