Facebook Users Who Sued Over Privacy Setting Changes Drop Case

Zuckerberg/keyhole

A group of four Facebook users who sued the site earlier this year for allegedly violating their privacy have withdrawn their case.

The one-sentence notice of dismissal, filed with the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif. last week, didn't give a reason for the decision. The papers specified that the withdrawal was without prejudice, which means that the plaintiffs theoretically can bring the case again.

This lawsuit stemmed from Facebook's decision late last year to change its privacy settings to reclassify a host of information as "publicly available." At the same time, the social networking site also changed many of its default settings to share-with-everyone, sparking concern that people who reviewed their settings quickly and accepted the defaults were inadvertently sharing more data than they had intended.

The consumers had filed suit against Facebook in February, alleging that the new settings were "confusing and materially deceptive" and lessened their privacy.

Facebook simplified its settings in May, but the consumers said in court papers that the company's move only worsened matters.

Earlier this month, the social networking site asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the consumers had not suffered any harm as a result of the revised privacy settings.

Facebook is still facing privacy lawsuits from other users. At least three people have sued the company for allegedly sharing information about them with advertisers through referrer URLs. In addition, the company is embroiled in privacy litigation related to "instant personalization," a feature that automatically shares users' names, photos and other data with three outside companies -- Microsoft Docs, Pandora and Yelp -- unless users opt out.

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