Earlier today I received a weird email which said I was eligible to receive money because apparently Facebook violated my privacy rights. I didn’t believe the email so I went to Google to do some research and found out that it was real but not as simple as I thought.

In 2011, Facebook was sued because of their feature known as Sponsored Stories. If you don’t recognize that name, its when Facebook informs you on your news feed that a person has liked a page or uses a page. For example, if you’re friends with me on FB and I decide to like ESPN’s FB page then ESPN can pay Facebook to let my friends (including you) know that I liked the page and that I use it so that hopefully you can like the page as well through my influence.

The problem with that is 1. I never gave FB permission to share with my friends what pages I like and 2. Its deception on my news feed because that’s not a real status update which are the real features which are supposed to be displayed on the news feed.

Still with me? OK. Facebook ended up losing the case and decided to make a settlement of $20 million for all those who claim “damages to their social networking experience”. The math has been done and its estimated that each victim would receive $10. The problem is that the settlement hasn’t been approved by the courts yet so there’s no word on whether Facebook will have to up the ante in their settlement or not.

The other big problem is that there is no word on how many people could actually claim damages because every Facebook User in the US is eligible. If the courts think its economically unfeasible they might just have FB donate the money to a charity of the user’s choice. You can register to become a claimant at www.fraleyfacebooksettlement.com.

Deadline for being a claimant is May 2nd and the final settlement hearing will be held on June 28th.

Thank you to ThatsNonsense.com for information. Log on to their website for more information.