D&B Hoovers Promotions with Individuals’ Information California Class Action

D&B Hoovers is a website and database offered by Dun & Bradstreet Holdings, Inc. to which people can buy subscriptions. The complaint for this class action alleges that the company uses the names, personal information, and personas of individuals to promote paid subscriptions to the website, without the consent of those individuals, and in violation of California’s Right of Publicity statute.

The class for this action is (1) all current and former California residents (2) who are not subscribers to Dun & Bradstreet (3) whose names and personal information Dun & Bradstreet incorporated in profiles used to promote paid subscriptions.

According to the complaint, the D&B Hoovers database contains information on hundreds of millions of individuals, and subscriptions to it cost more than $10,000 per year. Salespeople and marketers use it, the complaint claims, “to send personalized sales and marketing communications to the individuals who appear in the D&B Hoovers database…”

To promote the database, the complaint alleges, Dun & Bradstreet displays the names, contact information, job titles, names of colleagues, and other information on various individuals who have not given the company any of this information and have not consented to its use. Would-be users can sign up for a free trial of the database may view all of this information, the complaint says, but if they try to download it, they are told they must first buy a subscription.

The complaint alleges, “Dun & Bradstreet does not present [individuals’] profiles simply as samples advertising access to a single profile. Rather, Dun & Bradstreet uses [these] names and personal information to advertise paid subscriptions to the D&B Hoovers database, which provides access to profiles of hundreds of millions of individuals, information about millions of companies, and many additional services.”

Also, it says, Dun & Bradstreet is the designer and creator of the content, including the profiles used to advertise subscriptions and the messages used to try to convert free-trial users to paid subscribers. The information on the individuals has commercial value, the complaint asserts, which is demonstrated by the fact that Dun & Bradstreet uses it for gain.

The company goes so far as to claim to own this information, the complaint alleges: “In a section of its 2020 annual report entitled ‘Our Competitive Strengths,’ Dun & Bradstreet states that one of its competitive strengths is ‘[o]ur owned, proprietary data sets [which] include … personal contact data.”

The plaintiff in this case, Odette R. Batis, says she does not know how Dun & Bradstreet got hold of her information. The complaint claims that the company “misappropriated [the] names, contact information, job titles, places of work, and other personal information without consent” from the individuals.

The complaint points out, “Consent is not all or nothing.” Individuals may have shared their information in a limited context—for example, a company website or a professional networking site—without consenting to the use of the information in another context or for another purpose, the complaint contends.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: Right of Publicity, Using Your Private Information Without Consent, Your Privacy