Facebook is getting sued for major privacy violations (worse than any of us ever thought).

I thought I'd start this out by saying "This isn't exactly Wilmington news...", but then I realized it is.  A Wilmington class-action firm is one of the firms helping with the prosecution, and it could possibly come through Delaware courts.    I won't say which firm, because I'm not sure my contact there wants this type of publicity just yet, but I'm sure it will be in the news soon enough. 

More importantly, this class action suit may be the biggest Facebook has yet faced, with the most sinister of implications.  Allegedly, Facebook has been tracking websites that users visit after they log onto Facebook.  This includes bank websites, "naughty" websites, competitors' websites, political websites, and anything and everything you visit online in the course of a day.  Facebook allegedly has the technology to collect the website cookies that you accumulate, and they're logging them after you shut down your computer.    In the past, Facebook was sued for doing this on a smaller scale with their short-lived 'Beacon' program, which tracked when users visited only certain partner sites.  This new lawsuit alleges that Facebook is tracking not just partner sites that users visit, but all sites on the internet.

The excuse is, of course, that it helps Facebook tailor advertising to specific users.  But I can think of a myriad of much more sinister applications, if this practice is not curbed.  What's to stop any group, whether official or unofficial, from getting this information from Facebook?  What's to stop hackers from finding out exactly what websites a political foe visits in his spare time, for instance?

If this doesn't concern you or if I sound overly paranoid right now, consider this: if these instances of privacy invasion aren't curbed now, the internet is just going to become more and more Big Brother-like over time.  If this is allowed to slip by, what will we be dealing with in 5 years?   Spokeo-like sites where all you have to do is type in the name of your high school crush to find out what her top 20 most-visited websites are?

Okay, enough question marks out of this humble blogger.  Here's a news story with more details:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-30/facebook-may-face-group-privacy-suit-over-web-tracking-after-users-log-off.html