Italy OKs Meta Class Action

A Milan court has cleared a class action against Meta over Facebook data scraping that exposed millions of users’ personal details. (reuters.com) The order came on Tuesday, April 14, in a case filed by the consumer group Centro Tutela Consumatori Utenti, or Consumer Protection Center. The court said the scraping happened between January 2018 and September 2019 and was disclosed by Meta in 2021. (reuters.com) The case centers on “scraping,” a method that uses automated tools to pull information from profiles at scale rather than breaking into a company’s internal systems. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said in 2022 that the Facebook incident involved personal data from about 533 million users and led to a 265 million euro fine for Meta. (dataprotection.ie) The South Tyrol consumer group says more than 35 million people in Italy were affected and argues Meta’s default privacy settings made some data searchable by “everyone.” It is seeking compensation for Facebook users in Italy through the class action route. (consumer.bz.it) The Milan ruling opens a civil path for collective claims tied to scraping, not a classic internal network breach. That distinction tracks years of European privacy enforcement that treated the episode as a data protection failure even though attackers harvested data from public-facing features. (reuters.com) (dataprotection.ie) Meta said it “acted promptly” after identifying the issue and said the claims are “entirely without merit.” The company told Reuters it is confident the case will be dismissed. (reuters.com) The 2022 Irish decision did not just impose the 265 million euro penalty. It also ordered corrective measures after finding Meta had failed to meet General Data Protection Regulation standards on privacy by design and privacy by default. (dataprotection.ie) What happens next is more procedural than final: the Milan court has allowed the case to proceed, not decided liability or damages. Meta now faces a collective civil fight in Italy over a Facebook scraping episode regulators were already punishing in Europe four years ago. (reuters.com)