When a blogger revealed that Facebook tracked users even after they had logged off from Facebook’s service, the company thanked him and promised an immediate fix. But plaintiffs’ attorneys socked the company with a class action seeking $15 billion in damages for alleged privacy violations, a number just shy of what Facebook raised in its IPO.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers are constantly searching for the next mega lawsuit, and data privacy looks very promising with its litigation trifecta: major consumer exposure, complex and increasingly antiquated state and federal data privacy laws, and ever larger and more frequent data breaches.

Originally published in Law360 on November 8, 2013.