Facebook is dealing with the legal backlash following another massive data breach.
Facebook has not had it easy this year. Between the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the most recent hack that exposed the private information of over 50 million accounts, they’ve had to deal with some severe scandals that had negatively impacted them. This includes a severe hit in their stock prices, a large reduction in users, and an even more negative public opinion of Facebook from users all around the world. The latter scandal has already shown potential consequences.
Mashable reported that two Facebook users have banded together to file a class action lawsuit against the multi-billion dollar social media platform. The lawsuit was filed by Carla Echavarria from California and Derrick Walker from Virginia. However, documents revealed that this lawsuit is, “on behalf of all persons in the United States … whose PII [Personal Identifying Information] was compromised in the data breach.” On Echavarria’s part, the lawsuit alleges that Facebook’s actions violated parts of the Unfair Competition Law and Customer Records Act.
According to the newly filed lawsuit, Facebook was allegedly unable to protect user data, creating an act of negligence. Furthermore, those behind the social media network tried to hide what was described as a “lax and inadequate approach to data security.” This was allegedly due to poor data security measures taken during the Cambridge Analytica debacle back in March 2018. The lawsuit also alleges that Facebook did not tell their users about any of this.
There is some debate that Facebook was ignorant to the many security risks back in March. Court documents filed allege that during the spring scandal, its poor security measures were brought to light. Those working for Facebook were told that they were extremely vulnerable to a cyber attack of some kind — something that they’d already known before March. However, no action seems to have taken place to address any issues. That is the alleged reason as to why this huge data breach happened in the first place.
As of now, Facebook has not yet responded to the pending class action lawsuit. Whether they will remains to be seen, as well as how they will handle it in the coming months.
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