An Israeli judge has given the green light for a £270 million lawsuit to be launched against Facebook, meaning that the company will be expected to defend its privacy policy in court near Tel Aviv.

A group of Israeli Facebook users filed a suit objecting to the social media company's allegedly unauthorised use of their private posts to decide which adverts to show them.

Facebook said that it was not accountable to Israeli courts because its terms of use say cases should be heard in California. But Judge Esther Stemmer decided that a company should face suits in "any country where it does a significant amount of business".

Jonathan Klinger, an Israeli lawyer specialising in cyber law and a legal counsel for Israel's Digital Rights Movement, said he believed that the ruling showed that "judges do understand that the world has become smaller and consumer protection should be applied more generously".

Judge Stemmer said that Facebook's expectation that lawsuits should be only brought in California was likely to stop people from litigating. She gave Facebook 90 days to respond to the suit, and told it to pay court costs of £1,700.