Facebook will have to face lawsuit over scanning of users' messages

US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled that Facebook will have to face a class action lawsuit alleging it violated users’ privacy when it scanned the content of messages for advertising purposes.

Judge Hamilton denied Facebook’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed by Facebook users Matthew Campbell and Michael Hurley in 2013. The suit alleges that until October 2012, when the social network says it stopped the practice, it scanned the content of private messages sent between users for links to websites, which were then used for delivering targeted advertising. The complaint alleges that this violated the federal and state privacy laws by “reading its users’ personal [and] private Facebook messages without their consent."