Can I sue Facebook for the emotional stress my son is going through due to an embarassing fake profile?

italienne

No, how was facebook to know that this was not indeed your son. You need to go after the person that did this, not the corporation that would basically have to close down to verify everyone's identity.

Little Paul

how is this possibly facebook's fault? this kind of nonsense happens on the internet everyday, in all kinds of ways.

and why do you people always talk about "suing"... is it to teach a lesson? or is it to get money? either way, it's pretty selfish and unhelpful. can you imagine if everyone sued you for all the stupid things you've done in your life? (and don't tell me you're some perfect person.)

Magyar

no...
Seems to me you are not concerned with your sons mental health, but rather getting some cash.

Lunachit

this is life. kids are cruel (especially 13 year olds), and this is no exception. but for the love of god, just let him go through this. he'll get over it. I had the whole 8th grade wanna fight me once over some dumb rumors. but I'm over it. If anything I'm even stronger now than if that didn't happen.

Mohammad

You can not sue Facebook for this. It is not their fault, but you could surely sue the person that created this fake account.

danielle patricks =]

I am really sorry that this happened to your child, but I do not think that Facebook could do anything about this. I suggest that your son not get on unhealthy, addicting, and dangerous sites like Facebook and Myspace if he does not want to get hurt. It may seem like an "in" thing, but actually, his friends will not hate him if he would rather be safe than sorry. It always pays to be cautious and that is exactly what he would be doing if he just stayed away from those sites. I think that is what he should do; that would solve your whole problem.

WonderingWhy

No, it's not facebook's fault that some people are mean.
If you do find out who it is you can certainly sue THEM. Facebook has clauses about stuff like that, saying they dont allow it, etc. (in order not to be legally responsible).

Tell your son not to worry about it-- I'm sure his friends will understand when he tells them it's not really him. Or... he could make his OWN facebook page, add all of those friends to his REAL friends list, and then they'll all be sure to know which one is the fraudulent account.

wannabeoutside

Americans are too sue happy. People need to learn to toughen up. Teach your son to "man up" be tough and get over it. Don't clog up the courts with pointless lawsuits.

thedudewiththeanswers

People like you are the problem with our society today. A prank that should end in one parent calling another parent gets escalated to suing. Learn how to communicate and solve a problem yourself.

Facebook has millions of users, you actually think they are going to fact check every person who opens an account? Get real!!! Facebook and other sites do make people do e-mail confirmations and have some things in place to try to curb this type of thing but of course they can't fact check every profile that goes up. Facebook can easily however look up the IP address of the person who opened up the account. I believe they even have a department specifically devoted to doing this type of thing.

I feel bad for what you and your son are going through but suing is no the answer to everything. Get facebook to tell you who the IP address belongs to and contact that childs parents. If that doesn't resolve things contact your sons school as many schools have policies against cyber bullying.

user

its not facebook's fault so you cant sue them BUT you can inform them about this and they can help you settle things straight. if they ignore you or dont give you any service THEN you can sue them :)

no you can't sue facebook. you could sue the kid who posed as him. don't punish the site for a child's incompetence. it is petty. money won't fix your kids emotional problems.

Darren E

No.

The best you can probably do is sue the perpetrator of the action. Facebook would probably have to comply with a subpoena asking for which IP the postings were from, and the ISP responsible for the IP would probably have to comply with a subpoena asking for the identities used by that address (if possible.)

I can sympathize, but there isn't any rationale for holding the medium of publication responsible if they had no way to know the identity wasn't his. (i.e. They had no way to determine the truth of the allegations, or the identity of the maker.)

See the following cases, if you want more information:
Stratton Oakmont v Prodigy, (N.Y. Sup. Ct. May 24, 1995),
Zeran v America Online, 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997), and Blumenthal v Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44 (D.D.C. 1998). And most recently, Barrett v. Rosenthal (Cal. Sup. Ct., Nov. 20, 2006). The two Wikipedia links below provide some details on them.

Barrett v. Rosenthal, especially, is a finding by the California Supreme Court which holds that websites can't be sued for libel written by third parties.

I'm sorry that this is not the answer you're looking for. But, basically, you have recourse only against the author of the defamatory material.

Edit to add: If I wasn't clear - through your lawyer you would sue John Doe et. al. for libel, Doe being a user who created an account at Facebook (naming the account name) etc. Pursuant to that, your lawyer would file for the subpoenas to compel the identity of Doe to be revealed. In light of Barrett, it would seem very odd procedure to actually name Facebook as a defendant - though that might be possible, you may then face a prima facie dismissal. (All of this, though, would take a competent defamation lawyer to represent you, and his/her opinions would be the real ones that would matter.)

Good luck again!

noname n

lol, you can't sue facebook, and if you do, good luck winning that one.

so are you saying that if someone sends you a harassing email through Yahoo, that you should sue Yahoo for allowing them to send the message through to you? no.

you sue the person, not the company.

think smart, and stop trying to act smart. i sincerely doubt that your son is that distressed.

so, you should sue the person who did that for you. maybe you can get them for putting false information on an account, but your only chance against them is defamation of character, that's really the only thing i see in this.

oh and one more thing, you might have to look through Faceboook's private policy. it might state in there that they will give out an ip address just as long as you have a court order.

i know from prior experiences that if you have a court order you can remove anything you want from google.

hope this helps.

ben

They don't want something similar to this to happen:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/17/internet.suicide.ap/index.html

But no, you can't SUE them, but can get them to delete the profile.

asdf

i don't think you can sue them, but i really hope they can find who made the fake profile. I am really sorry about your son, that sounds horrible and I would be devastated if that happened to me. You might even be able to get it involved with the school, they might have a system for facebook stuff like that. Also, if the school gives out an email adress for all of its students, you can probably ask them if anyone has used that email adress for that profile. I can't think of anything else to do, but I hope you get this all figured out and I hope your son feels better!!! I can't imagine how stressfull and hard this must be!

gizmogurlie

While I sympathesize with what has happened to your son, there is no proof that you can use to link to the culprit.
Knowing the IP address may or may not help you in finding the real person because anything can be manipulated through the web. I think it's important that you focus on the _damage_ itself, rather than the source of damage.

If this situation really has caused your son to be emotionally distressed, you should figure out how to help your son get through this particular stage in his life instead of being "sue happy" and forget the real issue here.

What can you gain from a law suit? Monetary compensation? Can that really heal the emotional crisis in your family?
Even if you teach the culprit a lesson, what has that done for you and your son?
You should really think things through before you take any serious actions.

happy2help

maybe he is gay and just doesnt want to tell you =] becasue you are overprotective.

honestly

Adam K

Um hate to tell you this but seriously NO!!! Facebook had nothing to do with it. What your suggesting violates so many laws that i couldn't even count them. I mean if you were to go to the people directly THEN you might have a 1 in a hundred chance of suing them. Facebook is an open information shaing website. Every one who uses face book has a right to their privacy and to let ANYONE have and one eleses IP adress on there is a horible breach of there privacy. WHAT YOU NEED TO GET THROUGH YOUR HEAD IS THAT IF YOU DONT WANA GET BURNED STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN. as unfotunate as it is you know what people are going to make fun of you there going to taunt you and laugh at you. If you want your child to live the sheltered life then the internet sure as heck isn't the place to let him go. Facebook WILL NEVER EVER EVER RELEASE ANY IP ADDRESSES of people even if there absuing the sight they will simpply ban them. What you surgesting is an almost rediculous case senario. And the responsibility of what your child does on line lies in your hands. Heck if you brough this to court you would be lucky if you didn't end up having to pay there legal fee's!

Maui Jon

It's a prank, Mom. Kids can be cruel. You can stop being Mama Bear now.

shain m

Am not sure if you can sue facebook. But you can approach the cyber crime department. In india two such cases were reported and they did find the culprit. The punishment includes 10 years imprisonment.

momoftrl

nope, unfortunately there's nothing you can do until you find out who did it.

Laughing L

Can Facebook sue you for letting your "no-life" idiot son have friends who are stuck on the internet?
It seems the internet needs to come with a liability waiver.

Tell your "NO-LIFE" son to stay off the internet and look for something fun to do; maybe a girlfriend. As soon as he ignore his "low-life" friends he'll be fine.

lilblondiangel

I hate to tell you the same things as everyone else is. But there is really nothing that you can do. If you think that it is someone that you know, have the Mother talk to the son.

Daniel F

Can you sue? yes, you can sue over any matter. Will you win? Unlikely, Facebook did not knowingly enable the other party to generate the abusive material. If you ask facebook to remove the content and they do not, you may then have ground to stand on.

If your son has profiles on Facebook and other public sites, the assaulting party could justify his actions as satire of a public figure, which the Supreme court ruled was free speech, protected by the first ammendment (Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U. S. 46 (1988)) when your son makes his life public, it could be argued, he is open to public attack unless you can prove malicious intent.

Best choice for a suit is the person who set up the account.

Good Luck

yanxroc

I don't think you can sue and I don't think Facebook can realease the information you are asking for.

However, I do think you contact Facebook and demand they remove the fake profile if you haven't.

This is completely inappropriate and mean for anyone to do to someone, I have seen it before on MySpace and other sites. I understand both you and your son are upset. You would think people would learn after the story broke about the lady (adult) who made a page to harass a teenage girl, and that girl ended up committing suicide.

You say they linked to friends, are these your son's friends? I bet one of those people linked knows who it is, start by asking them. If it is not his actual friends, I'd find those kids and talk to them. As a parent you can apply pressure and scare them a bit (not physical, of course).

Good luck!

David S

Facebook will most likely not co-operate... While this was surely an unenjoyable thing, you have no legal bases on which to sue facebook... perhaps the person who "forged" themselves as your son... As far as the ip address goes, this is not a bad idea...but would only provide results if facebook decided to work with you. (I'm sure they have the information and are more than capable of retrieving it). I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to figure out who it was if your son is in a small school.. Of course i don't know it's in that context. Good luck though!

lil gee

If you know who did it, definitely go after them. If not contact facebook telling them to take it down. Not quite sure if suing them is allowed for that reason?

tennischica12

I'm not sure its possible to sue Facebook, because they had no way of knowing whether he was the one accessing that profile, or if it was someone else. However, i'm sure you can somehow figure out who made it. Sorry about what happened, and i hope you can confront the people involved.

i love red tank tops

a lot of people have the same problem with that on myspace and see, until now myspace is going strong. you can never sue such big sites like myspace and facebook.

canado

Forget a lawsuit, try contacting Facebook's abuse team at abuse@facebook.com, provide a link to the profile in your complaint and they should take care of it.

stevo0902

YES you can, you can sue for anything these days, but this is for sure. First of all, it doesnt have to be illegal for you to sue somebody, so dont think of it like that. If your son was harmed by facebook for reasons neither you nor your son could prevent you CAN sue, so call a lawyer and see where things go, also track the email thruough the editors of facebook if you want to know who did it. Email information gives adress and phone #. So sueing them could be another option or u could sue both. SO GO FOR IT

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