Apple and iOS developers sued for sharing personal user information without consent

Posted on 29-12-2010

In the case of Lalo versus Apple Inc. et al, Apple and few major iOS developers are being sued by Jonathan Lalo for selling his personal data from his iPad and iPhone to advertisers, data which included his age, sex, and location information.

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Lalo’s lawsuit is an attempt to make Apple and the developers of such apps as Pandora, The Weather Channel, Dictionary.com, Paper Toss amongst others stop collecting/sharing users personal information without consent, and, to assure the destruction of all material already exchanged – apart from of course, some monetary compensation for damages.

The suit’s contention is that the defendant was not notified that the usage and other data including its unique device identifying number (UDID) from his iPhone device was being tracked, actions that run contrary to Apple's own policies, which do not allow apps to transmit data about a user without their explicit consent.

A nearly identical class-action suit has also been filed by consumers in Texas and California, accusing the companies of violating federal privacy and fraud laws for their “unjust enrichment”.

While the data that is being shared is meant to be “anonymized” and strictly for the purpose of better targeted advertisements, it can be used to identify individual users when combined with the UDID of their device. Lawmakers and companies have known this for a while now, and most companies (including Apple), especially advertising firms, now straddle the fence – claiming the information they collect is effectively anonymized; when a significant portion of that data can be simply be de-anonymized.

Listed under tags :

apple , iphone , privacy , pandora , ipad , lawsuit , , advertisement , opt-in , apple inc , ios , apple ios , class-action lawsuit , fraud , ios devices , backflip , paper toss , ios developers , jonathan lalo , wiretapping , advertising , anonymized , de-anonymized , the weather channel , dictionary.com , apple lawsuit , people versus apple , udid , unique device identifying number , opt-out