A North Texas woman is suing Facebook and Blockbuster for allegedly violating her privacy.
According to Cathryn Harris, Facebook was posting alerts on her profile each time she rented a movie from Blockbuster. The updates featured her name and the movie title she had rented, Harris said.
“I wasn’t renting any movies that I’m ashamed of, but what if I had been? It’s nobody’s business,” Harris said. “They need to follow the laws and respect their customers’ privacy and not try to go behind the curtain.”
The 25-year-old homemaker said she made the discovery last year when she rented the 1985 adventure film “The Jewel of the Nile,” starring Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito. She said an alert appeared on her Facebook profile detailing the transaction.
As a result, Harris filed two lawsuits — one last year against Blockbuster and one against Facebook last month. The suits claim a partnership between the two companies allowed Blockbuster to send Harris’ movie-renting habits to Facebook without fair opportunity to opt out.
“You had to kind of find out about it on your own and then opt out of the certain companies, but if you didn’t know about it, then you didn’t know you needed to opt out,” Harris said.
According to Harris’ attorneys, the companies violated a federal law — the Video Privacy Protection Act .
“The case we filed in April of 2008 seeks to redress the problems Blockbuster acquired. They are the party that has the information and has the duty to protect it,” Thomas Corea said.
However, Blockbuster disagrees. A spokesman for the company said “…any information we send our customers is done in accordance with all privacy laws … a customer with a Facebook account is in control of whether they elect to keep their Facebook information private or disclose it to others.”
In the meantime, the online social networking giant is settling a similar California lawsuit and has agreed to discontinue the advertising program. In response to the case, Facebook said it learned “how critical it is to provide extensive user control over how information is shared.”
The outcome of the California case could determine whether Harris can move forward with a class-action lawsuit.
“We have a right to do business with a company and not have to worry about if our privacy is going to be violated,” Harris said.
