Christina Davis reports:
On Thursday, a class action lawsuit was filed against Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) in Wisconsin federal court alleging that the media company illegally holds private, personally identifying information about its subscribers.
Lead plaintiff Derek Gubala alleges in his class action lawsuit that Time Warner retains information, including Social Security numbers, addresses, credit card numbers and dates of birth from subscribers who have ended their contracts with the company. The plaintiff claims that Time Warner retained information he provided for services from 2004 to 2006 until 2014.
[…]
The class action lawsuit alleges that Time Warner violated the Cable Communications Policy Act by holding onto former customers’ private data longer than necessary for taxes or any other purpose. The complaint also argues that the practice compromises customers’ privacy and the financial value of their data.
Read more on Top Class Actions.
I’d love to see the FTC go after a company for unnecessary data retention, although I’m sure companies would claim that the data are still important/useful to them – to try to get customers back. But could the FTC argue that this was an “unreasonable” practice that is “likely to cause injury” to consumers?