Logitech Wiretaps, Eavesdrops on Website Visitors CIPA Class Action

The complaint for this class action alleges that Logitech, Inc. maintains a website with a chat feature for the use of visitors. But the complaint claims that Logitech wiretaps these communications and harvests data from them, in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA).

The class for this action is all persons in the US who, within the statute of limitations period (1) communicated with Logitech through the chat feature of the Logitech website using telephony subject to California’s Penal Code Section 632.7, and (2) whose communications were recorded or eavesdropped on without their prior consent.

CIPA, the complaint alleges, forbids both wiretapping communications and eavesdropping on them, unless all parties to the communications give their consent. The complaint alleges, “Compliance with CIPA is easy, and the vast majority of website operators comply by conspicuously warning visitors if their conversations are being recorded or if third parties are eavesdropping on them.”

On the Logitech website, the complaint alleges, the wiretapping and eavesdropping is done by embedding code into its chat feature

Uniqlo’s website does its wiretapping and eavesdropping, the complaint claims, by embedding code into its chat feature that creates transcripts of all conversations, and “allows at least one independent third[ ]party (on information and belief, ‘Zendesk’) to secretly intercept in real time, eavesdrop upon, and store transcripts of [Logitech’s] chat communications with unsuspecting website visitors—even when such conversations are private and deeply personal.”

According to the complaint, although the law was originally written to apply to wiretapping telephone conversations, it also applies to Internet communications. “By definition,” the complaint alleges, Logitech’s “chat communications from its website are transmitted to website visitors by either cellular telephony or landline telephony.”

What does the company do with the information it gleans in this way? The complaint alleges that it does it “to harvest data for financial gain.” The complaint quotes an industry expert as saying, “Live chat transcripts are the gold mines of customer service. At your fingertips, you have valuable customer insight to make informed business decisions… When people are chatting, you have direct access to their exact pain points.”

The complaint asserts that Logitech does not get visitors’ consent to the wiretapping or eavesdropping and that consumers are not aware that it is taking place. “By contrast,” the complaint alleges, Zendesk boasts that it harvests data from the chat transcripts it intercepts, eavesdrops upon, and stores.”

The complaint calls these practices “illegal” and “offensive,” and alleges that website visitors would be “shocked and appalled to know that [Loogitech] secretly records those conversations and allows a third party to eavesdrop on them in real time under the guise of ‘data analytics.’”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: CIPA, Your Privacy, wiretapping