A Florida librarian and activist has filed a civil lawsuit against Facebook which claims that FB failed to protect its users effectively, resulting in his $70.50 damages.
Theodore Karantsalis, a week ago, filed this $70.50 lawsuit against Facebook claiming that a virus managed to compromise his account on Facebook, changed his name to John Doe, then started sending out spam.
According to Karantsalis, Facebook deleted his friends and other related objects from his account during their restoral process. He then claims that he was forced to manually re-add such data back onto his account, and suffered from a monetary loss of approximately 30 cents per friend he had, which was about 250.
Facebook, in a statement said,
"We're very interested to hear how he came up with the figure of $70.50. He's not going to get it but we promise to refund all the money he paid to use Facebook. Seriously, we're glad to know how important Facebook is to Mr. Karantsalis but his account was not disabled, is currently active, and he is using it, so I'm not sure what the problem is."Karantsalis says that he did not fall for anying phishing scams and is takes steps to maintain his security. Apparently, he is a privacy advocate that has taken extra caution when dealing with safety, including the use of anonymous proxies. He thinks that if such an issue could happen to him, then it can very easily be happening to many other users, especially because he takes steps that many other users tend not to take in order to protect his security.
This guy also happens to have a background in suing organiztions and companies. He has previously sued the city of Miami Springs for not providing sufficient access to roads, he sued Sprint and Wells Fargo due to a privacy exposure, and he also sued the U.S. Defense Department and Air Force.
This case however, doesn't seem to me that it has any real merit here. First off, the $70.50 is ridiculous in how he managed to come up with such a random figure (each friend is worth 30 cents?? And why exactly is that?). Then there's the issue of Facebook's TOS which states that they're not liable for such problems that they did not cause.
It is an interesting case, but I highly doubt it will pass and I think it'll be striked down as soon as it hits any judge. Sphere: Related Content
