The digital world has quickly become a litigious one, as the list of lawsuits born of patent, intellectual property, and privacy issues continues to expand at a breakneck pace.
As reported Tuesday in Businessweek, a new complaint seeking class action status has been filed in a federal court in San Jose, California.
The suit claims Cupertino, California-based Apple’s iPhones and iPads are encoded with identifying devices that allow advertising networks to track what applications users download, how frequently they’re used and for how long.
Lending credence to the claim are the results of a recent Wall Street Journal test, which looked into 101 mobile applications and discovered that better than fifty transmitted personal data to third-party advertising companies.
In most instances, users were not first notified of the data’s transmission.
Consequently, Jonathan Lalo of Los Angeles County is proceeding with a lawsuit against Apple and various app makers, the prominent likes of which incude Pandora, the Weather Channel and Dictionary.com.
“Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks,” Lalo – about whom little is known – asserts in the lawsuit, “including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views.”
The case is Lalo v. Apple, 10-5878, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
