Facebook Inc faces a lawsuit for monitoring users’ activities on and off its networking site.

The social networking giant is being sued by 25,000 people contracted by Max Schrems, a data privacy campaigner from Vienna.

Schrems claims the manner in which Facebook monitors its member’ activity on and off the site is in breach of the laws — especially after the company introduced external website tracking, big data analysis and graph search. He also alleges the social network collaborated with a US surveillance scheme Prism.

The case is directed against Facebook’s Irish subsidiary, which is accountable for every account belonging to users outside North America. It has been filed with a commercial court in Vienna.

Schrems requested Facebook users based outside Canada and US who desired to participate in the case to sign up through an app. The data privacy campaigner is asking for 500 Euros in damages for each of the first 25,000 individuals who signed up to the case. In case he wins, he plans to share the money after handing over a 20-percent cut to a German company that is funding the case.

However, Facebook has denied claims that it was aware of Prism before it was cited in leaked US government documents. Instead, it has admitted complying with the requests of national security from US government agencies.

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