Nick Eaton reports:
A class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges Amazon.com fraudulently circumvents users’ Web-browser privacy settings to collect personal information without permission and share it with other companies.
The suit says Amazon tricks Microsoft’s Internet Explorer into thinking the e-retail site is “more privacy-protective than it actually is,” and uses a clever work-around to collect users’ personal information even if they have set their browser to block it. The plaintiffs allege Amazon knowingly and fraudulently set up its website to spoof IE, and purposefully misleads customers in its privacy policy published online.
Read more on Seattle PI.
The suit seems based, in part, on research by CMU’s CyLab that revealed that Amazon used a compact policy that was inconsistent with its written privacy policy. The suit also alleges that Amazon uses flash cookies.