Apple and its application providers are beings sued for permitting iPhones and iPads to be tracked and user behavior to be transmitted to third parties without users’ knowledge. Currently, two class action lawsuits are pending against the companies in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The suits allege that each iPhone and iPad carries a Unique Device Identifier (UDID) that permits advertising companies to track not only the frequency with which the application is used, but also the user that is accessing the application. Moreover, the suits allege that some of the application providers sell user demographic information including age, gender, and political views to third-party advertising networks.

These suits were filed based on current privacy laws, but stand for a consumer attempt to do what federal legislation has yet to accomplish. Consumers involved in the class actions are asking the federal court to put an end to the pervasive sharing of consumer information that takes place over the Internet via computers and mobile devices. Tracking methods include cookies, identifiers such as the UDID, and other tracking mechanisms. And, current privacy policies provide little notice to consumers of such tracking devices where they are usually very lengthy and seldom read.

Currently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed a potential Do-Not-Track system, but the design and implementation procedure for such a system is still under debate. Likewise, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is devising industry privacy guidelines that may aid with some of the consumer concerns mentioned in the suits. Until the FTC and MMA’s guidelines are produced, suits such as these may be consumers’ best defense to tracking. Industry leaders are, however, urged, to design company-specific privacy measures to avoid overly impinging on consumer privacy.

Arent Fox is monitoring these cases and other privacy issues. Please contact Anthony V. Lupo, Sarah Bruno, or Eva Pulliam with questions.

Anthony V. Lupo
lupo.anthony@arentfox.com
202.857.6353

Sarah Bruno
bruno.sarah@arentfox.com
202.775.5760

Eva Pulliam
pulliam.eva@arentfox.com
202.857.6323