A U.S. District Judge Edward Davila has dismissed the allegation on Facebook for spying on its users even when they have signed out of the social networking site.
The decision filed late on Friday freed Facebook by dismissing the allegation on the company for spying its users improperly between April 22, 2010, and September 26, 2011, even if they have signed out of their Facebook accounts.
The U.S. District Judge Edward Davila said that the plaintiffs were unable to bring any reasonable evidence for privacy interference or any real economic harm.
The plaintiffs had claimed that Facebook desecrated federal and California privacy and wiretapping laws by installing cookies on the browsers that allowed tracking when they looked at the outside websites having Facebook “like” buttons.
However, Facebook had promised that once you get logged out of the account, the cookies get deleted. Facebook continued to get information till when a free researcher publicly disclosed the issue in September 2011, the lawsuit stated.
The judge said that if the plaintiffs wanted to keep their browsing histories private then they could have taken steps and were unsuccessful in showing that Menlo Park, California-based Facebook had unlawfully intercepted their communications.
Davila wrote.”The fact that a user’s web browser automatically sends the same information to both parties,” meaning Facebook and an outside website, “does not establish that one party intercepted the user’s communication with the other,”
Both Facebook and lawyers for plaintiffs did not immediately respond to the request for comment. Later in a written statement, Facebook said that the company was pleased with the court’s ruling.
The decision banned the plaintiffs from altering and re-filing the privacy and wiretapping accusations but permitted them to pursue a modified breached of the contract claim.
Previously, a legal version of the lawsuit was dismissed by the judge in Oct. 2015.