Overstock.com Website Chat Feature Wiretapping CIPA Class Action

Overstock.com, Inc. operates the website of the same name, www.overstock.com, and this class action brings suit against it for violations of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA). According to the complaint, the company (1) wiretaps the communications website visitors have via the website chat feature and (2) lets at least one other party eavesdrop on these communications, for the purpose of gathering data to be used for financial gain.

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

Unfortunately, the complaint alleges that Overstock does not do this. It both wiretaps visitor communications and shares the information with third parties, the complaint alleges, in violation of “both industry norms and the legitimate expectations of consumers.”

Website chats are particularly valuable to companies, the complaint alleges. It quotes an industry expert as saying, “Live chat transcripts are the gold mines of customer service. At your fingertips, you have valuable customer insight… 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 there. It also allows a third party, which the complaint suggests is a vendor called Salesforce, to intercept, eavesdrop on, and store the transcripts of the chats. “By definition,” the complaint alleges, Overstock’s “chat communications from its website are transmitted to website visitors by telephony subject to the mandates of CIPA.”

CIPA requires that those who wish to record conversations must get the consent of all parties to the conversation. But the complaint alleges that Overstock has not gotten visitors’ consent to its activities, and that visitors are in fact not even aware of them.

When they use the chat feature, the complaint claims 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. Overstock’s behavior, the complaint claims, is “illegal, offensive, and contrary to visitor expectations[.]”

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

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: CIPA, Intercepting Electronic Communications, Sharing Personal Information with Third Parties, Your Privacy, wiretapping