Allrecipes App Shares Video Views with Third Parties Class Action

The Allrecipes app provides users with thousands of recipes, with detailed instructions for making all kinds of dishes. Allrecipes is owned by Meredith Corporation, and the complaint for this class action alleges that Meredith has violated the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) and Massachusetts Video Privacy Act (MVPA) because, it claims, Meredith “knowingly and intentionally” discloses users’ personally identifiable information and lists of videos viewed by each person to third parties.

The class for this action is all persons in the US who used the Allrecipes app with location services enabled to watch videos and had their PII transmitted to a third party. A Massachusetts Subclass has also been proposed.

On the VPPA, which was passed in 1988, the complaint quotes Senate Report No. 100-599: “The Act reflects the central principle of the Privacy Act of 1974: that information collected for one purpose may not be used for a different purpose without the individual’s consent.”

The law forbids a “video tape service provider who knowingly discloses, to any person, personally identifiable information concerning any consumer of such provider.” The law was amended in 2012 to include video that users can access from televisions, computers, and cell phones.

The MVPA, forbids an entity “engaged in the business of leasing or renting videos or any employees thereof” from “mak[ing] available to any third party records that would indicate the name of the borrower or the title or category of any video leased or rented by a borrower.”

When consumers download the Allrecipes app, it asks if it may obtain their location from the device’s GPS and if it may send push notifications to them. The complaint alleges, “At no point does [Meredith] receive permission from users to share their location information, personally identifiable information, or video viewing information with third parties.”

The attorneys for the plaintiff in this case claim to have hired a research company to analyze disclosures coming from the Allrecipes app to third parties when a user is watching a video. According to the complaint, Meredith has built various application programming interfaces (APIs) into the app. The APIs allow Meredith to share data and functionality information to third parties, including developers, business partners, and others.

One such API in the Allrecipes app is the Segment API, owned by Twilio, which the complaint alleges sends information to third parties that they can assemble into a particular user’s video viewing behavior.

The complaint provides pages of detail on how this is done. The complaint concludes, “Based on the above, it is abundantly clear that [Meredith] intentionally and knowingly discloses users’ PII to Twilio via the Segment API.” However, it alleges, the plaintiff in this case “never consented, agreed, nor otherwise permitted the Allrecipes App to disclose his PII to third parties.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: Sharing Personal Information with Third Parties, Using Your Private Information Without Consent, Your Privacy