Apple, Inc. Draws Privacy Complaints

According to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on February 15, 2011, 

Apple Inc. violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act by sharing customers’ personal information with application developers who, in turn, allowed advertisers to track the users’ devices (Daniel Rodimer et al v. Apple Inc., N.D. Calif., No. 11-700, complaint filed 2/15/11).  The class action complaint, alleges that after a customer downloaded an application from the iTunes Store, Apple transmitted the users’ Unique Device Identifiers to application developers.  Once the application developers had the users’ UDIDs they were allegedly able to install tracking identifiers on the mobile devices.  Advertisers where then able to track all mobile device data that was generated from the mobile devices.  According to the plaintiffs, this impaired the speed at which their devices functioned, and also violated their privacy. Among the defendant application developers are Groupon, National Public Radio, New York Times and Pandora.

Richard Newman, Internet Lawyer – Hinch Newman LLP