Upon its introduction in November, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg heralded the Beacon ad platform as a hundred-year revolution in advertising. What it became was a PR nightmare that raised many questions about the maturity of the young company.

When Beacon started broadcasting the Christmas gifts people were buying to all of their Facebook friends, the company stonewalled. It took the weight of a petition from MoveOn.org and thousands of articles in the press, many in this publication, before Zuckerberg finally admitted that the company had made mistakes in the implementation, apologized and rejiggered the permission settings.

Apparently, for some, those tweaks came too late. Facebook, along with several of its Beacon affiliate partners, is the target of a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. The suits alleges privacy violations falling in between the period in beginning November when Beacon was rolled out, to Dec. 5, when the permission changes were put in place.

There has so far been no comment from Facebook or the other defendants, who have said that they have not yet been served.