UC Irvine researchers conducted a comprehensive study into California data brokers and the extent to which they break state consumer privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Legal observers and consumer protection advocates were alarmed by the chief finding of the study: data brokers don’t comply with CCPA requirements.
An important data privacy case recently concluded with a shocking verdict by the jury: Google secretly collected user data on cellphone apps. As a result, Google must now pay $425 million to affected consumers. The lawsuit, Rodriguez v. Google LLC, was filed in federal court and alleged that Google violated the privacy rights of millions of cellphone users in the United States who thought that their online activity was private.
Flo Health, the owner and operator of the popular Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker app, was sued in federal court for allegedly sharing users’ personal health data with Meta (Facebook) and Google. Although Flo Health settled the class action lawsuit, the case still went to trial with Meta named as a defendant – and a jury issued a precedent-setting verdict against the social media parent company.
A high-profile trial about data privacy violations by Facebook parent company Meta concluded with a shocking verdict from the jury: Meta violated California’s consumer privacy laws. The lawsuit concerned allegations that Meta unlawfully collected the personal health data of users of the Flo Ovulation & Period Tracker app. Women who use the app are encouraged to enter private details about their health, including sexual activity, birth control, and menstrual cycles.
In major legal news, Flo Health settles data privacy lawsuit accusing the company of violating California’s consumer privacy laws. The class action lawsuit alleged that Flo Health collected the highly personal health information of millions of women who used the company’s period-tracking app and then unlawfully shared that data with Meta (Facebook), Google, and other tech companies. The harvesting of users’ protected healthcare information is seen as particularly invasive because the data often includes intimate details about a person’s health and sexuality.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) is a federal law enacted in the mid-1980s just as cell phones, the internet, and other digital technologies were becoming prevalent throughout the United States. Many Americans began to use email, prompting lawmakers to put stringent privacy protections in place for those types of communications. Today, data privacy concerns remain a major concern in industries where customer records shared online typically involve sensitive material, including the financial and healthcare industries.
The explosion of e-commerce websites, internet marketing, and AI technology has raised serious concerns about the privacy of consumers online. Increasingly, courts in California and elsewhere are relying on the Federal Wiretap Act to ensure that consumers’ sensitive personal information remains confidential. What is the Federal Wiretap Act? The federal data privacy law broadly protects consumer data by placing clear limits on how the government and private businesses can go about collecting information about website visitors.
LiveRamp, one of the largest data brokers in the world, was sued for invading the privacy of consumers – and now a federal court has ruled that the case can move forward. The invasion of privacy lawsuit against LiveRamp, Riganian v. LiveRamp Holdings, Inc., was filed as a class action in the U.S. District Court for the California Northern District. The plaintiffs are California consumers who accused LiveRamp of unlawfully collecting consumer information both online and offline and then selling that information to third parties for marketing purposes.
A federal court in California recently issued a key ruling in an important, potentially precedent-setting case, and court observers and legal experts are now asking: Did Rack Room Shoes violate federal wiretap law? The pre-trial ruling, issued by the U.S. District Court for the California Northern District, might have implications for the future of consumer privacy laws nationwide. The case, Smith v.
A California court recently ruled that a trap & trace CIPA claim against Peachybbies can proceed. The Plaintiff, a California consumer, alleged that Peachybbies violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) by installing TikTok Software on its website to track and intercept the personal information of website visitors without their consent. This data was then allegedly shared with TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform.