Privacy Case Moves Forward Against Facebook and Zynga
The Ninth Circuit found that the companies may have violated Facebook's privacy policies when they disclosed user information for advertising purposes. Separately, the court ruled that there was no violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act because the data disclosed (including Facebook IDs and HTTP referers) is not "contents" of a communication. Congress is set to consider several ECPA reforms, and could fix the court's ruling by making clear that the law prevents the disclosure of personally identifiable information. For more information, see EPIC: Electronic Communications Privacy Act and EPIC: Facebook Privacy.