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Facebook was tagged with a class action lawsuit Oct. 19 alleging the social media giant tracks locations despite users changing their privacy settings to prevent it.

Brought before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit alleges that Facebook tracked plaintiff Brett Heeger's whereabouts despite his having “expressly attempted to limit” such “by turning the location history tracking and storage option to off” in his user account.

“Plaintiff relied on Facebook's promise that, if he turned location history 'off,' Facebook would no longer build a location history logging his private location information,” the complaint said. “Nevertheless, Facebook continued to track and store his private location information without his knowledge or consent even when plaintiff did not use the Facebook app or tag his location in posts.”

The suit, filed by attorneys from Tycko & Zavareei and Stueve Siegel Hanson, largely mirrors a class action against Google over similar data practices, with both companies accused of violating California privacy laws. The allegations against Google spawned from an Associated Press investigation that revealed some of the company's apps and services were tracking users' physical whereabouts after users set their device's settings to prevent such recording.

Facebook is charged with violating California's Invasion of Privacy Act, which prohibits using “an electronic tracking device to determine the location or movement of a person.” The lawsuit claims Facebook's “applications, software, device components, and other technology on plaintiff's and each class members' mobile phone” constitute as tracking devices under the law.

Also among charges brought against Facebook under California law is an alleged violation of the state's Constitutional Right of Privacy, with the company accused of having “intentionally intruded on plaintiff's and class members' solitude, seclusion, right of privacy, and private affairs by continuing to track, build and store detailed location histories without their knowledge or consent.” These actions are “particularly egregious,” it notes, because the company “surreptitiously, and in an unfair and deceptive manner, continued and continues to track plaintiff and class members after they affirmatively disabled location history on their mobile phones.”

Plaintiffs attorneys are also alleging that location information transmitted by Facebook between user devices and Facebook's servers unbeknownst to users is a violation of the Stored Communications Act. The company's actions, plaintiffs claim, also violate a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission to not share information like physical location when a user asks them not to.

“This behavior by Facebook was malicious, oppressive, and willful, and calculated to injure plaintiff and class members in conscious disregard of their rights,” the complaint adds.

A Facebook spokesperson told The Recorder in an email that “Facebook's data policy and related disclosures explain our practices relating to location data and provide information about the privacy settings we make available.”

“This lawsuit is without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” they added.

But plaintiffs attorney Sabita Soneji, an Oakland partner at Tycko & Zavareei, noted that “Facebook's disclosures about location tracking are both misleading and omit crucial information.”

The suit isn't the first brought against Facebook by Tycko & Zavareei. The firm filed a complaint against the company in August alleging it shared user data with mobile device makers like Apple and Samsung without user consent. Soneji is also the plaintiffs attorney in that lawsuit. 

That investigation led the firm to “find out about this separate but equally egregious privacy violation,” Soneji said.

“A reasonable consumer thinks that turning off 'location history' means that Facebook will no longer track or store his location information,” Soneji added. “Indeed, reasonable consumers only turn off that feature because they want to protect their private location data. In reality, Facebook continues to track and store users' location information without users' consent—and regardless of their privacy settings.”