I suppose it was inevitable. Rich Lord of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:
A Jeannette child filed a lawsuit Friday, seeking class action status and accusing Viacom Inc. and Google Inc. of improperly using tiny computer programs called cookies to track the online activity of children.
Identified only as K.T., the girl is under 13 years old and has registered to use the websites nick.com and nickjr.com, owned by Viacom and associated with the Nickelodeon television franchise, the complaint filed in U.S. District Court said. By registering with the websites, K.T. accepted the placement on the family’s home computer of cookies — scripts that communicate information on Internet use to Viacom and Google, it said.
The companies, the lawsuit said, “conspired to use and profit from said information for targeted marketing directed at” K.T. and other children.
Read more on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.