Ancestry.com Beats California Privacy Suit Over Yearbook Photos

Ancestry.com Inc. convinced a federal judge on Monday to dismiss a lawsuit by California residents who claimed the genealogy-based company’s inclusion of their photos in its Yearbook database violated their privacy rights.

The California residents didn’t allege an injury in fact to support their proposed class action because the photographs came from “public yearbook information distributed to classmates (and ultimately to Ancestry),” Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The non-subscriber plaintiffs claimed Ancestry unjustly enriched itself by using their yearbook photos to solicit paying subscribers to its platform. But “Ancestry’s ...