Recently, yet another suit hit Facebook, and this time it is caused by various game advertisements that scammed numerous users. The second defendant in this federal class-action lawsuit is Zynga, and the two companies are requested to pay more than $5 million to the social network users who had been scammed through the displayed game ads.
This action was predicted by several voices over the web, since the representatives of a law firm from Sacramento, Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff, announced that they were searching for people who had been scammed by the same ads while playing Mafia Wars or Farmville. They were trying to gather enough data to file a class-action suit, and when they found the appropriate information, they went to the federal district court.
In all fairness, it is worth mentioning that neither of the two defendants is the real originator of the advertisements in question. The situation appeared because third-party companies place ads within the Zynga games listed on Facebook, thus generating great revenue for the two companies. The scams are conducted by encouraging users to sign up for unauthorized cell phone charges, as well as highly priced mail order products (such as CDs), which are presented as “free,” “free trials,” or parts of “online quizzes.”