Glassdoor Class Action Says 600k Users’ Identities Exposed

A woman from California says the website Glassdoor put her and other members at risk of employer retaliation by exposing their email addresses.

Plaintiff Melissa Levine says she was one of hundreds of thousands of Glassdoor members whose email addresses were exposed by a mass email the company sent out in July 2016.

She says the exposure violates certain federal and state laws governing the way companies handle consumers’ sensitive electronic information.

Glassdoor is a website on which employees can anonymously share information about their workplaces. For employers, the site offers advertising, branding, and recruiting services.

The site’s anonymity is intended to allow employees to speak freely about topics that might otherwise put them in danger of retaliation – topics like salary information, workplace conditions, and evaluations of supervisors.

According to Levine’s Glassdoor class action lawsuit, a mass email sent by Glassdoor destroyed that anonymity for thousands of its members, exposing them to the risk of retaliation. Glassdoor sent the email on July 22, 2016 to alert members to a change in its terms of use, Levin says.

She claims that email publicly revealed the email addresses of at least 600,000 Glassdoor members. The email was sent in batches to 1,000 Glassdoor users at a time, directly exposing each address to 999 other users, Levin says.

Levin claims this mass email violated the federal Stored Communications Act, a law that provides consumers with a means of redress when a company mishandles their electronically-stored information.

She also claims that by violating its own stated privacy guidelines, Glassdoor violated the California Online Privacy Protection Act.

The plaintiff quotes a Glassdoor informational webpage as saying “[a]ll contributions submitted to Glassdoor are anonymous to other community members, including employers. Glassdoor does not display your email address, Facebook profile, or any other personal information.”

The Glassdoor class action lawsuit also raises claims for negligence, public disclosure of private facts, breach of contract and of implied contract, as well as unjust enrichment.

Glassdoor was founded in 2007 by CEO Robert Hohman and Expedia founder Rich Barton, intending to make it a source of information for members of the workforce looking to make career decisions.

Levin says the website now has over 30 million members from 190 countries.

In 2015, following a $70 million infusion raised with help from Google Capital, the company’s value was estimated at $1 billion or more.

Levin seeks to represent a plaintiff Class consisting of all individuals registered with Glassdoor and whose email addresses were exposed in the July 22 email. She also proposes a subclass consisting of all Class Members who reside in California.

She seeks an award of compensatory, statutory and punitive damages, restitution of Glassdoor’s revenues, and an order forbidding Glassdoor from continuing the allegedly unlawful conduct at issue.

Representing Levine are attorneys Mark J. Geragos, Ben J. Meiselas and Mark Bolin of Geragos & Geragos.

The Glassdor Privacy Rights Class Action Lawsuit is Melissa Levine v. Glassdoor Inc., Case No. 2:16-cv-5696, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

UPDATE: On Oct. 7, 2016, Glassdoor asked a California federal court to dismiss the class action lawsuit on grounds that the plaintiff failed to meet the Supreme Court’s Spokeo standard of injury in fact suffered from the email leak.

UPDATE 2: On Nov. 10, 2016, Levine fought Glassdoor’s dismissal bid claiming that the job review website was negligent and potential Class Members were harmed by the email address leak.