On March 25, 2019, the Supreme Court denied Zappo’s petition for certiorari allowing a class action to proceed for a 2012 data breach even though consumers didn’t establish they were injured by the breach. This is a setback for companies hoping to limit their liability in data breach cases. By way of background. On June […]
On March 25, 2019, Vienna’s higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht Wien) ruled that “every citizen can not only file a complaint with the data protection authority, but also submit a lawsuit in courts.” See here. The claims is complicated and concerns Facebook’s breach of EU privacy laws. See here for more info. The admissibility of […]
Update: In October 2019, the European Court of Justice held that in order to store cookies on user devices, the users must actively consent and that pre-checked checkbox that users must actively deselect is not a valid form of consent. The European Court of Justice also stated that all types of cookies require active consent, […]
On February 27, 2019, the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a proposed stipulated order for civil penalties and other reliefs against Musical.ly for violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting personal information from kids without parental consent. The $5.7 million civil penalty is the FTC’s largest ever under COPPA. […]
On February 7, 2019, the Bundeskartellamt, the German antitrust authority, prohibited Facebook from combining data concerning German Facebook users gathered also from third party websites when the user didn’t give voluntary consent to this practice. The decision concerns all private users of Facebook based in Germany. According to the Bundeskartellamt’s decision, until now, individuals […]
On January 15, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that websites and mobile applications (app) of places of public accommodation must be fully accessible to persons with disabilities. By way of background, Plaintiff – a blind man – alleged that Defendant Domino’s Pizza, LLC, (Domino’s) failed to design, […]
Tags: US PRIVACY
On January 25, 2019, the Illinois Supreme Court found that data subjects do not need to allege a concrete injury in order to sue under the Biometric Information Privacy Act (Act) (740 ILCS 14/1 et seq., BIPA). Contrary to the appellate court’s view, the Illinois Supreme Court found that “actual injury or adverse […]
Tags: US PRIVACY
On January 10, 2018, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued his opinion in the case of Google v. CNIL (Case C-507/17). In the opinion, the Advocate General stresses that the right to be forgotten must be balanced against other fundamental rights, such as the legitimate public […]
In November 2018, a German local court, the Amtsgericht Diez, decided on a claim for immaterial damages under Art. 82.1, GDPR. According to this source, on May 25, 2018, Plaintiff received an e-mail in which Plaintiff’s consent to receive a newsletter was requested. An email of this sort is considered spam under German law and […]
On October 10, 2018, UK High Court blocked the class-action against Google over unlawful iPhone tracking allegations. The claimant, Richard Lloyd, alleged that, during 2011 and 2012, Google secretly tracked the internet activity of Apple iPhone users and then sold the data. The method by which Google was able to do this is generally referred […]