Vitacost.com Website Chat Feature Wiretapping CIPA Class Action

The California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) forbids both wiretapping of and eavesdropping on electronic communications. But the complaint for this class action alleges that Vitacost.com, Inc. does both through the chat feature of its website, Vitacost.com, for the purpose of gathering data to be used for its own financial gain.

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

CIPA forbids wiretapping or otherwise eavesdropping on electronic communications without the consent of all parties involved in the communication.

Unfortunately, the complaint alleges that Vitacost (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, in violation of “both industry norms and the legitimate expectations of consumers.”

“To enable wiretapping,” the complaint alleges, Vitacost “has covertly embedded software code that … automatically intercepts, records, and creates transcripts of all conversations using the website chat feature.” For the eavesdropping, the complaint claims, Vitacost “allows at least one independent third-party vendor (on information and belief, NiceCXone) to use a software device or contrivance to secretly intercept (during transmission and in real time), eavesdrop upon, and store transcripts of [Vitacost’s] chat communications with unsuspecting website visitors—even when such conversations are private and deeply personal.”

“By definition,” the complaint alleges, Vitacost’s “chat communications from its website are transmitted to website visitors by telephony subject to the mandates of CIPA…”

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.”

However, 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. Vitacost’s behavior, the complaint claims, is “illegal, offensive, and contrary to visitor expectations[.]”

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

While the plaintiff in this case is honestly interested in Vitacost’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, Your Privacy, wiretapping