Facebook Ordered By Court To Release Information On ‘Revenge Porn’ Poster

For all the good that social media sites like Facebook brought to the table, sinister and sleazy acts like revenge porn arrived with it. But some people are not taking this kind of public humiliation sitting down and are fighting back.

One such woman is “Chantal.” The 21-year-old woman sued Facebook demanding information about a revenge porn video that was posted on the site. The video showed Chantal, who was a minor at the time, performing a sex act on her then-boyfriend.

The video was removed from the site “shortly afterwards” but can still be found online.

On Thursday, the Amsterdam District Court ordered Facebook to give up the identity of the person who uploaded the revenge porn or have its servers investigated by a private investigator. Facebook had two weeks to comply and surrender the suspect’s information – name, email address, phone numbers, date of birth – as well as the computer’s IP address and the date and time the video was uploaded, viewed, and removed.

However, Facebook claims that the company no longer has any relevant information about the account since it was deleted.

The revenge porn video in question was uploaded to Facebook on January 22 under an account created with a false name and according to court documents, the site also took it down that day, an hour after it was reported as offensive. Chantal reported the incident to the police the following day. The creator of the fake account requested the account to be deleted on January 26 and on April 30, Chantal’s lawyer contacted Facebook for information regarding the account.

But based on Facebook’s policies, once it receives a deletion request, the account is deactivated shortly thereafter. The company then begins to delete data after a specific time period has elapsed. The social media site says that it can take up to 90 days to delete all data from its systems.

Facebook released a statement on Friday.

“The offending account was ultimately deleted before we received any request for user data, so all information about it was removed from our servers in accordance with our terms and applicable law.”

However, Facebook’s lawyers weren’t able to clarify if the information being asked from the company was stored on a backup server, prompting the court to consider the possibility that some information might still be recovered (which was the reason behind the two weeks grace period given to the company.)

Even though Facebook has claimed that the data has been deleted, the court ruling allows for an independent investigator to search the company’s servers as there have been cases wherein data was successfully retrieved two years after it was deleted.

[Image via mobil advertising watch]