• by Ray Schultz , December 5, 2024

A California resident has filed class action suits against Politico, Gannett and Nexstar Media, alleging that they violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) by gathering personally identifiable information (PII) and sharing it with third parties without consent. 

Filed by John Deddeh, the three lawsuits are nearly identical, according to Bloomberg Law. 

The Politico complaint charges that the company has a practice of  “embedding and using various trackers” on the Politico website to install and store third-party cookies and collecting users’ browser and device data along with IP addresses and other PII. 

The software trackers constitute “unauthorized ‘pen registers’ under CIPA,” the complaint adds. This collection of IP addresses through the trackers allowed third parties to “obtain personally identifying, non-anonymized information,” and adds that “IP addresses revealed geographical location and other personal information sufficient for third parties to conduct targeted advertising, that Plaintiff was unaware of the tracking, and that Plaintiff did not consent to it.”

It is not clear that a private action like this will succeed on its own merits, but there could be a wave of such cases if it does.  

The suit asks for class action status, compensatory damages and statutory damages of $5,000 per CIPA violation under the California Penal Code.

The cases are on file with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.