• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 6, 2010

Reunion site Classmates.com is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the site violated users' privacy by revising its default settings to make users' information accessible via Facebook, iPhone apps, and other third-party services.

In a motion arguing that the case should be dismissed, Classmates.com says that users' profile information was available to other Web users before its change in terms. "All Classmates.com users are made aware that their profile information is (and always has been) publicly accessible by anyone with Internet access," the company says in papers filed in federal district court in Seattle. "The only limitation to accessing that information prior to the feature changes at issue in this lawsuit was immaterial: from a technological standpoint, Internet users had to land on the Classmates.com Web site to view the information."

The privacy lawsuit, filed earlier this year by Classmates members Thomas Ferguson and Patrick Fahy, alleges that the company's revisions to its privacy policy in January could expose members to "a panoply of harms," including identity theft, harassment and stalking.

They now oppose Classmates' motion to dismiss the case, arguing that most profile information was only available to other Classmates.com members -- "within the Internet equivalent of a gated community" -- before the recent announcement about the change in terms. "In late 2009, Classmates devised a plan to throw open these gates, and provide members' personal information to persons Classmates does not know, and cannot track, such as users of Facebook or mobile devices such as the iPhone," they argue in papers filed with the court last week.

Ferguson and Fahy allege that Classmates broke its contract with users by changing its privacy policy and default settings on an opt-out basis.

But the company contends that it didn't violate its contract with users because it said in its original privacy policy that it reserved the right to change its practices at any time.

Ferguson and Fahy counter that a clause allowing Classmates to change its privacy terms at will is not valid. "If Classmates has carte blanche to decide any day that is not bound by any of the contract provisions that comprise the privacy policy, then there is no contract -- it is completely illusory," they argue.

The pair also allege that Classmates.com violated federal wiretap law by divulging confidential communications. But Classmates.com denies it violated the federal Stored Communications Act, arguing that the statute doesn't protect "electronic information that is readily accessible to the general public," like profile data.

The matter is scheduled to be on the court's calendar on July 9.