Paducah Man Sues Facebook
- {Kentucky}...David Hoffman of Paducah has filed a federal lawsuit against the social networking company Facebook that accuses it of violating wiretap laws by recording his Web browsing history when he wasn't logged into the site. Hoffman is asking a judge to grant class-action status to represent the roughly 150 million Facebook users in the United States. Hoffman's lawsuit seeks a preliminary and temporary injunction restraining Facebook from intercepting electronic information when users aren't logged in and from disclosing any of the information already acquired. It also seeks damages of $100 per day for each of the class members or $10,000 per violation, along with an undisclosed amount in punitive damages. The Kentucky lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court, is similar to cases filed in recent weeks in California, Kansas and Louisiana stemming from the revelation that Facebook placed programs known as tracking cookies on the browsers of its users that traced their Internet activity. Each of those lawsuits also seeks to represent Facebook users in the United States. When the issue of the cookies first arose, the company issued a statement saying there was no security or privacy breach and Facebook did not store or use any information it should not have. The company said many sites use cookies to personalize content and provide security.
