Facebook Gets Double Dose of Legal Issues

Facebook is currently involved in a couple of separate lawsuits. One of them involves click fraud and the other involves data portability.

The Click Fraud Suit

Sports site Rootzoo filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in federal district court in San Jose, CA, according to a report from MediaPost. They are apparently seeking class action status. Rootzoo’s claim is that Facebook charged advertisers for more clicks than what actually happened. Specifically, there was one day where RootZoo claims to have only had 300 clicks, and that Facebook charged them for 804.

Facebook said in a statement, "We have developed a series of sophisticated systems to detect suspicious clicks and ensure advertisers are not charged for this activity. In addition, we analyze tremendous amounts of data to discern larger click patterns and, in rare cases where this research or other analysis reveals advertisers have been charged for invalid clicks, we have always, and will continue to, issue credits to impacted advertisers."

Rootzoo is not the only party to complain of such activity from Facebook. A variety of users have voiced such issues in various locations on the web.

The Data Portability Suit

The second legal battle Facebook is involved with is a little more complicated. This one is actually a countersuit from a site called Power.com, who Facebook sued in the past after it violated their terms of service. Jason Kincaid paints a more elaborate rendition of the big picture in this case, but here is a look at the actual legal document.

20090709_PowerBattlesFacebook_Lawsuit -

If Facebook’s terms of service were violated, its hard to imagine the company losing this battle, although, I have no legal background by any means. Either way, it will be interesting to see the outcome of both cases.

There are 4 Comments. Add Yours.

steveo
July 10, 2009 at 11:28 am

when will facebook learn to strengthen up their facebook policy
Cooler
July 12, 2009 at 12:24 pm

Facebook sucks, they deserved to be sued.
Official Safety and Security
July 12, 2009 at 12:26 pm

Click fraud is a real problem. That’s one of the reasons I don’t have many pay per click campaigns running for my safety and security web site. Thanks, Chris, for this info.
bainzy
July 13, 2009 at 9:04 am

If facebook are found guilty of click fraud then it is and can be called nothing else except theft, if this case is won and a class action forces facebook to pay back all of this maybe stolen money I for one will refuse and demand that the criminal authorities do their job and let the crime fit the punishment, my daughter is grounded for two weeks because she took sweeties from the jar without asking, if facebook have had their hands in the sweetie jar the crime is the same and should be recognised as the same. Heads must role, I have been charged loads by facebook and have never traced a deal or the amount of clicks back to them, I thought it was a mistake but never in my favour now I know robbing bastar**.