Austrian law student Max Schrems appealed to a billion Facebook users around the world on Friday to join a class-action lawsuit against Facebook's alleged violations of its users' privacy. Schrems, a thorn in Facebook's side who has a case against the social network pending at the European Court of Justice, has filed a claim at Vienna's commercial court and invited others to join the action at www.fbclaim.com using their Facebook login. Under Austrian law, a group of people may transfer their financial claims to a single person - in this case, Schrems. Legal proceedings are then effectively run as a class action. Schrems is claiming damages of 500 euros ($670) per user for alleged data violations, including aiding the U.S. National Security Agency in running its Prism programme, which mined the personal data of users of Facebook and other web services. Users from anywhere outside the United States and Canada may sign up to join the Austrian case, since Facebook runs all its international operations from fellow EU country Ireland. The case relies largely on the EU Data Protection Directive. A specialist financier will bear the legal costs if Schrems loses the case and will take 20 percent of the damages if he wins, meaning users can join the case at no financial risk.
This is dumb. Why aren't they suing the actual root of the problem, the NSA? Oh because obviously everyone just wants a bit of free cash, and doesn't actually care about the spying part.
After linking FB account, the website wanted a scan of government ID. I understand there may be need for it, but I don't believe such thing as free lunch. Could be an ID theft scam as far as I can tell.
