In late December 2010, consumers filed two class action lawsuits against Apple Inc., claiming that several applications they downloaded from Apple’s App Store sent their personal information to third parties without their consent. Specifically, the consumers claim that Apple allowed third party advertising networks to follow user activity through the Unique Device Identifiers that Apple…
Category: Court
IP addresses and user identification in the WikiLeaks case
Melissa Ngo comments on the DOJ’s attempt to get the IP addresses of Twitter users involved in the WikiLeaks investigation: […] Web sites, such as Twitter, can easily collect IP addresses. The best protection would be for the web sites to expunge the data after a short period, as news site Indymedia.us showed in a 2009 case….
TX: Company being sued over alleged privacy violation in DVD
Jennifer Emily reports on a lawsuit against Cornell Companies Inc. mentioned previously on the companion blog, PHIprivacy.net. A company that managed a residential facility for court-mandated drug treatment is being sued for allegedly violating the privacy of its female residents by videotaping them and distributing the material as a promotional DVD. According to the lawsuit…
1986 Privacy Law Is Outrun by the Web
Miguel Helft and Claire Cain Miller report on how ECPA needs updating to bring the same legal and privacy protections to electronic communications as postal mail enjoys: Concerned by the wave of requests for customer data from law enforcement agencies, Google last year set up an online tool showing the frequency of these requests in…