• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, June 9, 2010

Recent revisions that Facebook made to its privacy settings not only didn't fix the problems, but made them worse, say a group of consumers who are suing the company.

"This 'new and simpler' site bedeviled users with hidden links, buried default settings, and enigmatic descriptions," four users allege in an amended complaint filed Tuesday in federal district court in the northern district of California. The complaint updates two previous lawsuits filed by some of the same consumers earlier this year and subsequently consolidated.

The consumers argue that Facebook is violating the federal Stored Communications Act and also their right to publicity, or to control the use of their image and name for commercial purposes. They are seeking class-action status.

The newest complaint addresses privacy changes that Facebook made in December, as well as the recent revisions, announced late last month by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "For months, user information that was intended to be kept private nonetheless has been made public without consent due to hidden or indecipherable 'privacy settings,'" the plaintiffs allege.

While Facebook simplified and revised some of its settings last month, the consumers argue that the modifications were not adequate. "These latter changes failed to address many of the major issues surrounding the privacy settings; in certain significant respects, they made matters worse," they allege.

Specifically, the users argue that Facebook's new privacy controls are too difficult to find -- particularly the link to remove listings from search engines. "Facebook has concealed it in the least obvious place possible: under a tiny, bottom-of-the page link for 'Applications and Websites,'" they allege. "A user would have no reason to click this link to find the 'Public search' setting."

Last December, Facebook riled privacy advocates by classifying a host of data as "publicly available information" -- including users' names, profile pictures, cities, networks, lists of friends and pages that people are fans of. Facebook also changed the default settings for many users to share-everything, spurring criticism that users who reviewed their settings quickly and accepted the defaults might inadvertently share more than they had intended.

In April, Facebook made another round of changes. Among others, the company launched its controversial instant personalization program, which automatically shares users' information with the outside companies Microsoft Docs, Yelp and Pandora. Facebook launched that program on an opt-out basis.

Late last month, Facebook rolled back some of the changes and also attempted to simplify its privacy settings.

For this most recent complaint, the plaintiffs arranged for former Federal Trade Commission official Thomas Maronick to research consumers' understanding of Facebook's privacy settings as they existed in April. He surveyed 203 users and concluded that the majority -- 65% -- were not able to identify which link on Facebook would allow them to control whether their information appeared in search results.

In addition to this case, the social networking company faces two privacy lawsuits brought by consumers who allege that Facebook shared their information with advertisers, and one lawsuit by a user who alleges that Facebook violated his privacy with instant personalization -- a new feature that shares users' information with the outside companies.