LensCrafters Website Chat Feature Wiretapping CIPA Class Action

Luxottica of America, Inc. owns or operates the website www.lenscrafters.com. The complaint for this class action brings suit against the company, alleging that it has violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) in two ways. The complaint claims that it (1) wiretaps the communications website visitors have via the company’s website chat feature and (2) lets at least one other party eavesdrop on these communications, for the purpose of gleaning data to be used for financial gain.

The class for this action is all persons in California who, within the statute of limitations, (1) communicated with Luxottica via the chat feature on the website using a cell phone, and (2) whose communications were recorded or eavesdropped upon without their prior consent.

CIPA forbids wiretapping or otherwise eavesdropping on electronic communications without the consent of all parties involved in the communication. The complaint alleges, “Compliance with CIPA is easy, and the vast majority of website operators comply by conspicuously warning visitors when their conversations are being recorded or if third parties are eavesdropping on them.”

Luxottica does not do this, the complaint claims, but instead ignores the law. Its wiretapping activities and sharing of information with third parties, the complaint claims, “violate both industry norms and the legitimate expectations of consumers.”

Why does Luxottica want this information so badly? The complaint quotes an industry expert as saying, “Live chat transcripts are the gold mines of customer service. … When people are chatting, you have direct access to their exact pain points.”

The wiretapping is done through a code that is embedded in its chat feature, the complaint alleges, which records, and creates transcripts of, the conversations that take place that way. It also allows a third party, which the complaint suggests is a vendor called Genesys, to intercept, eavesdrop on, and store the transcripts of the chats. “By definition,” the complaint alleges, Luxottica’s “chat communications from its website are transmitted to website visitors by telephony subject to the mandates of CIPA.”

The complaint alleges that the company has not told visitors that their conversations are being recorded or shared and has not gotten their consent to it.

When they communicate with the chat feature, the complaint alleges that visitors sometimes provide “highly sensitive personal data” so that they would be “shocked and appalled” to learn that their conversations are being recorded and shared with others for the sake of something called data analytics. Luxottica’s behavior, the complaint claims, is “illegal, offensive, and contrary to visitor expectations[.]”

While the plaintiff in this case is honestly interested in Luxottica’s products, the complaint alleges, he is also a consumer privacy advocate “who works to ensure that companies like [Luxottica] abide by the strict privacy obligations imposed upon them by California law.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: Intercepting Electronic Communications, Recording Calls Without Consent, Sharing Personal Information with Third Parties, Your Privacy, wiretapping