25,000 join class action suit against Facebook

An Austrian waging a battle against Facebook's privacy policies said
Wednesday that 25,000 users of the social networking giant have signed
on to his class action lawsuit.

The suit, filed by lawyer Max Schrems, claims a symbolic 500 euros
($660) per plaintiff from Facebook for several out of a "long list" of
alleged violations of the law, his advocacy group Europe-v-Facebook
said.

These include its privacy policy, Facebook's alleged participation in
the US National Security Agency's PRISM snooping programme, and
tracking users' visits to other websites with for example the "Like"
function.

Media-savvy Schrems, who first took on Facebook several years ago as a
student, filed the legal action in Vienna last week. He had to limit
numbers signing on to it to 25,000 after some 7,000 signed up every
day.

"With this number of participants we have a really excellent basis not
just to complain about Facebook in Europe but actually to do
something," Schrems said in a statement on his website www.europe-
v-facebook.org.

The suit is directed against Facebook's Ireland-based subsidiary, the
US firm's headquarters for its overseas operations, and was not open
to users from the United States and Canada. The subsidiary has to
abide by EU data protection laws, which are more stringent than those
in North America.

The majority of those who signed up were from Europe, with the biggest
numbers from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Facebook had 829
million active users worldwide on average in June, according to its
website.