Mobile App Makers Hit with Privacy Class Action Lawsuit

A class action lawsuit filed in Austin, Texas, is accusing 19 major mobile app makers, including Apple, Facebook and Twitter, of secretly and improperly raiding users’ address books for private information.

At least 13 Plaintiffs have signed on to the mobile app privacy lawsuit, which is seeking class action status to cover “all similarly situated” people who had their private information secretly gathered through mobile apps from the following companies: Path, Twitter, Apple, Facebook, Beluga, Yelp, Burbn, Instagram, Foursquare, Gowalla, Foodspotting, Hipster, LinkedIn, Rovio, ZeptoLab, Chillingo, Electronic Arts, and Kik Interactive.

According to the mobile app privacy class action lawsuit:

“Literally billions of contacts from the address books of tens of millions of unsuspecting wireless mobile-device owners have now been accessed and stolen. The surreptitious data uploads — occurring over both cellular networks and open, public wireless-access nodes in homes, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, stores, and businesses all across the nation — have, quite literally, turned the address-book owners’ wireless mobile devices into mobile radio beacons broadcasting and publicly exposing the unsuspecting device owner’s address-book data to the world.”

The mobile app privacy class action lawsuit is brought on behalf of a proposed class of all iOS or Android mobile device owners who acquired from Apple’s AppStore, Google’s Android Market, or Amazon.com’s Appstore for Android any app that, without the owner’s prior consent, harvested the owner’s address book data, specifically including the following apps:  Path, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare, Gowalla, Beluga, Foodspotting, Yelp!, Hipster, Kik Messenger, LinkedIn, AngryBirds, or Cut the Rope and other unknown apps having similar address book data harvesting functionalities.

Although Apple is named in the class action lawsuit because it facilitated the passage of this information from users to apps, Amazon and Google are not named as Defendants at this point.

The mobile app privacy class action lawsuit is asking the federal court to stop the alleged practice and to award Class Members damages, statutory damages, treble damages, exemplary and punitive damages, and equitable relief.

A copy of the Mobile App Privacy Class Action Lawsuit can be read here.

The case is Marc Opperman, et al. v. Path, Inc., et al., Case No. 12-cv-00219, U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas, Austin Division.