Kansas Facebook user files a cookie lawsuit

A KANSAS Facebook user has filed a federal lawsuit against the people database, saying that it violated wiretap laws by using a tracking cookie that records web browsing history after logging off the social network.

According to ABC News, plaintiff John Graham's lawsuit seeks class action status for the 150 million users of Facebook in the US. Graham is a lawyer and filed the lawsuit on Wednesday.

Graham's lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction to prevent Facebook from intercepting electronic information when users are not logged in and stop it from disclosing any of the information already acquired on its servers.

It also seeks statutory damages of $100 per day for each of the class members or $10,000 per violation, punitive damages, as well as lawyer's fees and court costs.

But Graham could be in for a tough time. Apparently, similar cases against Facebook and others filed under wiretap laws have be thrown out of US courts after they found computer cookies not to be wiretaps. Even in cases that did end up being litigated the plaintiffs could not prove any specific individual damages so they usually lost.

Although neither party commented on the case, Facebook issued a statement when the matter of the cookies was initially raised, saying there was no security or privacy breach and that the firm did not store or use any information it shouldn't have. It said that like every web site on the internet that personalizes content and tries to provide security for its users, Facebook places cookies on the computers of its users.

Last week, we reported that ten privacy groups had written to the chairman of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and asked for an assessment of Facebook's use of so-called super cookies, trackers used to follow users across the internet. µ