Facebook sued for allegedly intercepting private messages

On Monday, Matthew Campbell and Michael Hurley filed suit against Facebook with the Northern District Court of California. The men accuse Facebook of scanning private messages with URLs in them "for purposes including but not limited to data mining and user profiling." The suit asserts that this practice is a violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

"Representing to users that the content of Facebook messages is 'private' creates an especially profitable opportunity for Facebook, because users who believe they are communicating on a service free from surveillance are likely to reveal facts about themselves that they would not reveal had they known the content was being monitored," the plaintiffs said in their complaint.