District Court Reaffirms Dismissal of Wiretapping Claims Under California Invasion of Privacy Act

On the heels of holding that defendants’ use of session replay software did not constitute a violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, Judge William Alsup in Williams v. What If Holdings LLC and ActiveProspect Inc. has now denied the plaintiff’s request for leave to amend. In doing so, the court reaffirmed its previous holding that the plaintiff’s allegations only established that ActiveProspect’s use of session replay software functioned as a tool that supported What If’s management of its own website data, and not as a means of eavesdropping and aggregating information for ActiveProspect’s own purposes.

Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris LLP website.

Does Tracking User Activity on Websites Violate Electronic Interception Laws?

A new wave of class action lawsuits filed in California, Pennsylvania and Florida target companies that use technologies to track user activity on their websites, alleging such practices, when done without obtaining a user’s consent, violate electronic interception provisions of various state laws. The two technologies at issue are: 1) session replay software and 2) coding tools embedded in chat features. Session replay software tracks a user’s interactions with the website—their clicking, scrolling, swiping, hovering and typing—and creates a stylized recording of those interactions and inputs. Coding tools create and store transcripts of the conversations users have in a website’s chat feature. The plaintiffs in this new string of class actions allege that recording their interactions with a website and sending that recording to a third party for analysis without their consent is an illegal invasion of their privacy.

Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris LLP website.

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The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author and are not to be construed as legal advice.

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