Student files action lawsuit against Facebook

An Austrian law student has filed a class action lawsuit at a commercial court in Vienna against Facebook over privacy violations.

Max Schrems wants to receive damages of 500 euros (Rs.41,000) per user for the violations by the social network, urging the 1.32 billion Facebook users to join him in his legal battle, media reports said Sunday.

Facebook has a long list of violations.

"For this class action lawsuit, we have chosen basic or obvious violations of the law: The privacy policy, participation in the PRISM programme, Facebook's graph search, apps on Facebook, tracking on other web pages and 'big data' systems that spy on users or the non-compliance with access requests," Schrems wrote on Facebook Class Action website.

The legal proceeding will run as a class action because the Austrian law allows a group of people to transfer their financial claims to a single person.

"Our aim is to make Facebook finally operates lawfully in the area of data protection," the 26-year-old student was quoted as saying.