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Hello all, and happy Thursday!
Wiretap risk may have just become a whole lot riskier.
Nowadays, it’s pretty common to see law firms sue businesses for their use of commonplace website tracking technologies under these Cold War-era laws, like CIPA. You’ll often see lawsuits that invoke CIPA also pile on violations of the federal ECPA to get a bigger payout. Now, the Northern District of California has ruled that the CCPA can be stacked on top of CIPA suits, too.
The CCPA only permits a private lawsuit if a consumer’s personal information “is subject to an unauthorized access and exfiltration, theft, or disclosure as a result of the business’s violation of the duty to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices.” So, if a company gets hacked due to its poor security and your data is exposed, you could sue under the CCPA in theory.
But a district court just ruled in Allison v. PHH Mortgage that the CCPA’s private right of action isn’t limited to third-party breaches. The court ruled that the CCPA’s private right of action can trigger even for intentional or negligent unauthorized disclosures. So, if you’re using, say, a third-party tracking pixel on your site and don’t secure consent for that data transfer, an enterprising law firm might eye you for a CIPA and a CCPA suit.
The good news? This ruling doesn’t change the best practices for reducing your wiretap (and now, CCPA) risk. We held a webinar on reducing your CIPA risk earlier this year–if you couldn’t attend back then, it might be worth watching.
Best,
Arlo
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The Cold War may be over, but wiretap laws are alive, well, and–if you’re a member of the plaintiff’s bar–very lucrative. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed under decades-old wiretap laws in recent years, with the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) chief among them. How can you protect your business against opportunistic CIPA lawsuits?
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