Scale of Facebook privacy action to be limited

A lawyer suing Facebook in a class action over online privacy will limit the scale of the lawsuit after being overwhelmed with support.

Up to 7,000 users a day from more than 100 countries have registered their backing for Max Schrems’s David vs Goliath challenge in the courts in Austria.

The activist said the case, which could be the largest class and privacy action yet taken, will be restricted to 25,000 members of the social network in order to verify each account.

Mr Schrems said at peak times since last Friday, a new user was joining the claim every six seconds.

“We have hoped for large support, but the number of participants in such a short time exceeded my most optimistic expectations,” he said.

Germany tops the list for the most people backing the case with 5,287 Facebook users signing up, while there have been 944 users based in Britain and 162 from Ireland as of early yesterday.

The majority of users signing up are based in Europe: Austria has seen 3,712 users sign up, with 2,438 doing so in Netherlands, 1,179 from Finland, and 1,106 from Croatia.

“We were well prepared for this huge amount of claims. Nevertheless, we have to limit the claims after this short time, because we will have to verify and administer every individual claim,” Mr Schrems said.

“With this number of participants, we have a great basis to stop complaining about privacy violations and actually do something about it. If we are successful, the outcome will, of course, have a positive impact on all users.”

When numbers top 25,000, the Europe-V-Facebook.org campaign will continue to register the name and address of users who wish to join the action and they will be prioritised if the claim is expanded.

It is also thought the additional number of claimants will boost Mr Schrems case when it is expected to go to court later this year.

Mr Schrems is claiming damages of €500 per supporter in the courts in Vienna for alleged data protection violations by Facebook, including over the US Prism spy programme.

The action is being taken against the Irish subsidiary of the New York-listed web giant.

Mr Schrems has been challenging the social network’s use of data through his Europe-V-Facebook.org campaign and the Data Protection Commission in Ireland, and has more than 20 active complaints of alleged data breaches filed with the watchdog.

The class action claims Facebook Ireland is in breach of European law on users’ data and violates rights by tracking internet use on external sites, including the use of “like” buttons. It also attacks Facebook’s analysis of users through what it calls “big data” systems.

Facebook has several weeks to respond to Mr Schrems’s claims.

An earlier battle, launched in Ireland to find out what Facebook tells US spy chiefs, was referred to the European Court of Justice last month.

Facebook, which is worth around $200bn, has more than 1.3 billion users.