Facebook Wins Dismissal In $15B Lawsuit Over Users' Privacy Concerns

A $15 billion privacy lawsuit against Facebook Inc. was dismissed in a U.S. district court Friday, Bloomberg reported. The social networking website was accused by users of secretly tracking their browsing activities even after they logged off the website.

U.S. District Courts Judge Edward J. Davila in San Jose, California, said that users failed to “adequately connect” the value of the data collected by Facebook “to a realistic economic harm or loss,” according to the report. Davila said the users could refile most of their claims in a revised lawsuit.

The lawsuit emerged in 2012 after Facebook users noticed that the company’s monitoring of their internet activities did not stop after they logged off the social network's website. The lawsuit consolidated similar complaints filed between May 2010 and September 2011 in 10 U.S. states.

“We are pleased with the court’s ruling,” Vanessa Chan, a spokeswoman for Facebook, told Bloomberg in an e-mail.

Facebook has repeatedly come under the radar of government agencies in the U.S. and Europe over how it monitors private information of its users.

In the San Jose case, users accused Facebook of violating the U.S. Wiretap Act by monitoring their internet activity while they weren’t logged on. They also accused Facebook of improperly profiting from their information, the report said.