Twitter sued for scanning private messages

A lawsuit filed in San Francisco (CA) federal court alleges Twitter is "surreptitiously eavesdropping" on people who send private messages on the social media service in violation of federal and state privacy laws. The lawsuit alleges Twitter is "systematically intercepting, reading and altering" messages without the knowledge or consent of users.

For example, Twitter scans messages to replace a URL being sent with a custom hyperlink of its own. The lawsuit alleges Twitter does that to show it's the source of the traffic and generate "better advertising rates." "We believe these claims are meritless and we intend to fight them," Twitter said. The lawsuit is seeking class action status. It's similar to a lawsuit filed in San Jose (CA) federal court against Google's Gmail service for improperly scanning e-mails to serve ads to its users.