California users file civil suit against Facebook, allege privacy violations

September 21st, 2009 Facebook shuts down thorny marketing toolNEW YORK — Facebook is closing an uncomfortable chapter in its five-year history. The social network says it will shut down Beacon, a program that tracks users' activities on other Web sites.

June 25th, 2009 Judge finds Dell Inc. in contempt NEW ORLEANS — A state court judge has found Dell Inc.

April 30th, 2009 Facebook exec considers California AG job in 2010 SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The chief privacy officer of networking Web site Facebook says he's considering running to be California's attorney general in 2010.

July 5th, 2009 LONDON - Popular social networking site Facebook is being criticised for planned changes to its privacy settings. The Facebook officials plan to "simplify" the process so users only have to set them once, instead of for each individual feature.

June 25th, 2009 Facebook testing new control for shielding updates PALO ALTO, Calif. — Facebook is testing new privacy controls that will allow the online hangout's roughly 200 million users to decide who should see each of their personal updates.

July 16th, 2009 Watchdog: Facebook violates Canadian privacy lawTORONTO — Canada's privacy commissioner accused Facebook on Thursday of breaching Canadian law by keeping users' personal information indefinitely after members close their accounts. Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart released a report that also accuses Facebook of disclosing personal information about users to the nearly 1 million third-party developers worldwide who create Facebook applications such as games and quizzes.

January 23rd, 2007 MySpace has filed suit against notorious spammer and self-proclaimed "spam king" Scott Richter and alleged cohorts for sending what could become known as MySpam. Yesterday MySpace filed a complaint in a District Court in Central District of California, USA demanding a jury trial against Richter's for sending spam messages disguised as communications from members to other MySpace members.

July 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Facebook is facing a big image problem after it was revealed that third party advertisers were creating advertisements with users' profile photos without permission. And thus users are feverishly forwarding instructions to prevent their images from being used for advertising.

February 17th, 2009 NEW YORK - Popular social networking site Facebook said Wednesday it will return to its previous terms of service regarding user data after widespread opposition to its new terms under which it would have retained personal data even if someone deleted their account. In a blog post, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the networking site, said the move was temporary 'while we resolve the issues that people have raised', BBC News reported.

July 17th, 2009 LONDON - Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg has said that the online social networking site now has 250 million users. "The rapid pace of our growth is humbling and exciting for us," the Telegraph quoted him, as saying.

July 1st, 2009 Facebook plans to simplify privacy settingsNEW YORK — Facebook is overhauling its privacy controls over the next several weeks in an attempt to simplify its users' ability to control who sees the information they share on the site. Privacy has been a central, often thorny issue for Facebook because so many people use it to share personal information with their friends and family and beyond.

July 10th, 2009 Social networking aggregator sues FacebookNEW YORK — In a counterpunch to the world's biggest online hangout, a small Web company called Power.com has sued Facebook, saying it doesn't follow its own policy of giving users control over their content. Power lets users simultaneously access several social networks, including MySpace and Twitter.

March 12th, 2009 LONDON - Social networking site Facebook has launched in Arabic, the company has announced. Capturing a potentially huge market in the Middle East and beyond, Facebook, based in Palo Alto, California, already has large numbers of users in the Arab world, and the ability to use it in Arabic is likely to make it even more popular.

May 21st, 2009 LONDON - A new research has found that many social networking sites, including Facebook, continue to carry photographs of their users even after they have deleted them. Cambridge University researchers put photos on 16 popular websites, noted the web addresses where the images were stored, and then deleted them.

August 27th, 2009 Facebook agrees with Canada on privacy controlsTORONTO — Facebook agreed Thursday to give users more control over the information they share with outside applications like games and quizzes in response to concerns raised by Canadian privacy officials. Currently, people who wish to use such software have to agree to share all their data with the application.