The San Francisco-based, Facebook-owned business triggered a row over on-line privacy and image rights last week, and has already been forced to drop elements of its plans following user protests.

Privacy fears

But lawyers acting for a woman in San Diego maintain the company has still not done enough to assuage privacy fears, according to a report in local newspaper the Union-Tribune. A legal team for Lucy Funes issued proceedings in a San Francisco court at the end of last week, and told the newspaper that they would be seeking class-action status for the lawsuit.

Forfeit rights

The report says Ms Funes alleges that while Instagram has moved to allow exiting users to cancel their profiles if they disagree with the new terms and conditions, the company would nonetheless force them to forfeit their rights to retrieve images previously posted on the site.
Local lawyer, William Restis of multi-party action specialist law firm Finskelstein & Krinsk, told the newspaper that there continued to be elements of Instagram’s plans that caused concern to consumers. ‘If you want to opt out, there’s no mechanism to get you stuff back,’ he told Union-Tribune.