Twitter faces lawsuit for eavesdropping on direct messages

If plaintiffs win, every Twitter user in US could receive damages

Social media firm Twitter is being threatened with a class action lawsuit following allegations it is listening in on direct messaging communications between users.

The lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco court on Monday, alleges that Twitter is in violation of the US's Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as well as local privacy laws in California, as the company is based in San Francisco.

It disputes Twitter's claims that users can "talk privately" using direct messages - which had their 140-character limit removed back in August 2015, creating the opportunity for much longer private messages - instead claiming that the company is using foreshortened web links between users as a way to check their activity and mine the data for analytics.

"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," argues the lawsuit.

A link to the New York Times, shortened from the paper's usual URL to one of Twitter's http://t.co...-style links is cited as an example.

While it was filed on behalf of a Wilford Raney, the complaint is also lodged "on behalf of all others similarly situated". This means the lawsuit basically represents every American citizen who has ever sent or received a direct message, with damages being sought amounting to up to $100 per day per user.

While it can be argued that an automated algorithm is making this change, the core complaint of the lawsuit is that, by going through a modified URL, the link is being sent to analytics services, which can then pass information, even if it is something as simple as traffic origin, to the target website. So in this case, the New York Times could pay Twitter to inform it how many users were linked from Twitter to the New York Times in any number of sessions or across a certain time period.

"Twitter can ostensibly collect more information about its users by replacing every link in a tweet, tracking the websites its users share, and figuring out how they interact," reads the complaint.

"Such information reveals valuable details about each user's interests, relationships, and relative levels of social influence - 'important quality signals' that Twitter can (and likely does) monetise," it continues.