Michigan Farmer Magazine Subscriber Information Shared PPPA Class Action

Informa Media, Inc., which was formerly known as Penton Media, Inc., publishes Michigan Farmer magazine, to which some people subscribe. The complaint for this class action alleges that Informa makes money from sharing the identities of those subscribers, in violation of Michigan’s Preservation of Personal Privacy Act (PPPA) which attempts to keep confidential the Private Reading Information of Michiganders.

The class for this action is all Michigan residents who, at any point during the applicable pre-July 31, 2016 time period, had their Private Reading Information disclosed to third parties by Informa without their consent. (Although the statutory period for this action is six years, the deadlines for civil actions have been suspended, from the March 10, 2020 beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic period to the end of the states of disaster and emergency.)

The complaint quotes the PPPA as saying, “[A] person, or an employee or agent of the person, engaged in the business of selling at retail, renting, or lending books or other written materials … shall not disclose to any person, other than the customer, a record or information concerning the purchase … of those materials by a customer that indicates the identity of the customer.”

In addition to Michigan Farmer, Informa publishes many agricultural magazines, newsletters, and other publications, such as American Agriculturalist, Beef, Corn & Soybean Digest, Feedstuffs, and Farm Industry News.

How do we know that Informa is sharing this kind of information? Page 3 of the complaint shows a screenshot of a webpage from list broker NextMark, Inc., offering a “US Agriculture MasterFile (formerly Agbase) from Informa Mailing List” of more than 2 million subscribers at a base price of $150 per thousand.

Informa’s data may include other categories of individualized information, such as job title, number of employees, livestock type, sales volume, and annual farm income, the complaint alleges, which is then sold to data aggregators, data cooperatives, and list brokers.

The information, the complaint alleges, can be supplemented with data from other files, and passed it on to “aggressive advertisers, political organizations, and [nonprofit] companies” without the consent of the individuals involved.

The sharing of this information can be dangerous, the complaint alleges, because it can allow dishonest parties to target vulnerable members of society.

“In addition to causing waste and inconvenience,” the complaint alleges, “direct-mail advertisers often use consumer information to lure unsuspecting consumers into various scams, including fraudulent sweepstakes, charities, and buying clubs.” They often target the elderly, the complaint claims, because they are generally at home, may be lonely, and may have cash reserves or assets that they can access if offers seem attractive.

Consumers sign up for Informa’s subscriptions through different avenues, but the complaint claims that they are never asked to consent to any terms of service, privacy policy, or other information-sharing agreement. Informa, the complaint says, therefore has not obtained its customers’ consent to the sharing of their information.

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