Zynga Faces Class-Action Lawsuit over Alleged Privacy Breach

Life on the farm is never dull for long

​No matter what they do, some companies seem chronically incapable of playing peacefully in the sandbox of American capitalism with others. San Francisco-based game developer Zynga -- the wildly successful firm behind such popular Facebook applications as FarmVille and Mafia Wars -- is one of them, and  is now facing a class-action lawsuit driven by customer allegations of privacy abuses. Even those who have set their Facebook privacy settings to the strictest level can be affected by such breaches, according to the Journal, which also reports that this sort of sharing of user data by app developers is in violation of Facebook's rules. (Facebook is also coming in for its share of the blame, as evidenced by a similar lawsuit in Rhode Island.)