Twitter reading private messages, alleges lawsuit.
By Raif Karerat
A class action lawsuit filed on Monday alleges that social media giant Twitter is using URL shorteners in violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California’s privacy law.
The suit, brought in federal court in San Francisco from Wilford Raney and others similarly is claiming that despite Twitter’s assurances that users are allowed to “talk privately” among one another, “Twitter surreptitiously eavesdrops on its users’ private Direct Message communications. As soon as a user sends a Direct Message, Twitter intercepts, reads, and, at times, even alters the message.”
The lawsuit uses a link to The New York Times as an example, according to the Hollywood Reporter:
If a user privately tells a follower through the service to check out a story onnytimes.com, providing a full URL, Twitter will modify this into a custom link such as “http:/t.co/CL2SKBxr1s” (while still displaying the text “www.nytimes.com” to its users).
Twitter algorithms are making the change, but nevertheless, the lawsuit asserts that it’s wrong. By sending users to Twitter’s analytics servers before passing them on to the linked-to website, Twitter is allegedly benefiting by demonstrating to The New York Times and others where the source of the traffic is. “The end result is that Twitter can negotiate better advertising rates,” says the lawsuit.
The litigation is essentially claiming that Twitter is effectively profiting from wiretapping.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Twitter spoke to TechCrunch on the record and stated, ” We believe these claims are meritless and we intend to fight them.”
A similar class action against Google, which alleged that the company was combing through Gmail accounts for advertising purposes, was rebuffed when a judge ruled that the users were too dissimilar to make up a class, reported Business Insider.
The complaint can be read in its full entirety here.