Facebook must face data breach class action on security, but not damages: judge

(Reuters) – A federal judge said up to 29 million Facebook Inc
(FB.O) users whose personal information was stolen in a September
2018 data breach cannot sue as a group for damages, but can seek
better security at the social media company after a series of
privacy lapses.

In a decision late Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge William
Alsup in San Francisco said neither credit monitoring costs nor the
reduced value of stolen personal information was a “cognizable
injury” that supported a class action for damages.

Alsup also said damages for time users spent to mitigate harm
required individualized determinations rather than a single
classwide assessment.

Users were allowed to sue as a group to require Facebook to
employ automated security monitoring, improve employee training,
and educate people better about hacking threats.

Alsup rejected Facebook’s claim that these were unnecessary
because it had fixed the bug that caused the breach.

“Facebook’s repetitive losses of users’ privacy supplies a
long-term need for supervision,” at least at this stage of the
litigation, Alsup wrote.

Allowing a damages class action could have exposed Facebook to a
higher total payout.

Lawyers for the Facebook users did not immediately respond to
requests for comment. Facebook did not immediately respond to
similar requests.

On Sept. 28, 2018, Facebook said that hackers had exploited
software flaws to access 50 million users’ accounts, at the time
considered the largest breach in the California-based company’s
14-year history.

It scaled back the size two weeks later, saying 30 million users
had their access tokens stolen, while 29 million had personal
information such as gender, religion, email addresses, phone
numbers and search histories taken.

Facebook has faced many lawsuits over privacy, including for
allowing British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica
access data for an estimated 87 million users.

In September, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San
Francisco said Facebook must face most of a damages lawsuit over
access by third parties such as Cambridge, calling Facebook’s views
about users’ privacy expectations “so wrong.”

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg outlined his
“privacy-focused vision” for social media in a March 6 blog post.
“Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more
naturally, which is why we build social networks,” he wrote.

The case is Adkins v Facebook Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern
District of California, No. 18-05982.