iTunes Info Sold To 3rd Parties Claims Class Action Suit
Apple has been slapped with a federal class action lawsuit by customers alleging that information linked to their iTunes purchases was sold by Apple to various third parties. The plaintiffs argue that this was done in violation of their own individual states’ privacy laws and are seeking an excess of $5 million in damages.
According to the lawsuit that was filed May 24 in California’s Northern Federal District, Leigh Wheaton, Jill Paul and Trevor Paul (iTunes users from Rhode Island and Michigan) are alleging that Apple supplements its revenues by selling, renting and transmitting with third party developers, data aggregators, data cooperatives, and list brokers among others, information about the music that each customer purchases from the iTunes Store.
The lawsuit further alleges that after Apple discloses its customers’ personal listening information, the recipients of this data then match it to other personal information on Apple’s customers and then resell that information on the open market.
While the lawsuit makes the claim that “Apple does not notify let alone obtain the requisite written consent from its customers prior to disclosing their personal information,” the tech giant’s privacy policy does state that Apple collects “non-personal information” and that it “reserve[s] the right to collect, use, transfer, and disclose that non-personal information for any purpose.”
