Apple, App Privacy Violation Class Action Lawsuit Moves Forward

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

A privacy class action lawsuit filed against Apple Inc., Twitter Inc., Yelp! Inc. and other app developers will continue over allegations that the apps accessed users’ contact information without permission that was kept on various iDevices.

In U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar order he said that Apple’s five-year-long ad campaign qualifies as a legitimate “misrepresentation” even if plaintiffs aren’t able to cite specific statements that were made.

Apple is not immunized “from the effect of a misleading advertising campaign touting the ‘safety and reliability’ of its product because its statements may not have uniformly specified safety from ‘address book data . . . collected and used by third party applications,'” the judge said, citing the plaintiffs in support of their class action lawsuit.

The plaintiffs had argued that their Apple app privacy class action lawsuit is similar to the lawsuits filed against tobacco companies over decades long advertising campaigns.

“Apple’s contention that the advertising campaign must be specific to the protection of address book data is ‘like saying the tobacco companies were immunized from their statements about the ‘safety and health effects’ of smoking because their statements did not uniformly specify safety ‘from tar and chemical additive intake in the development of lung cancer’ or specify the effect ‘from nicotine intake in the development of addiction,'” the California federal judge wrote.

Judge Tigar said that the point “is well-taken,” as to why general statements are legitimate.

The plaintiffs claimed that they trusted the ads by Apple claiming that its iPhones, iPads and iPods were secure. The same was true of statements by other app developers, when they were allegedly violating users’ privacy by illegally collecting information from their contacts list on their devices.

Judge Tigar said that he put the class action lawsuit through a six-part test to see if the charges of misrepresentations against Apple matched the criteria laid out in the decision by the California Supreme Court over the cigarette advertisements by Tobacco companies.

Apple had said that its iPhone ad campaign, which was five years long and is the point of contention in this privacy class action lawsuit should not be compared to the tobacco company campaign ads, which were “decadeslong.”

The California federal judge said that it had been established by a California state decision, which had concluded that five years was long enough.

Twitter and other app makers had argued in their own motion that the court should dismiss the claims against them that they had allegedly violated the privacy of Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod users when accessing the users’ contact lists.

Judge Tigar did not buy into the app developers’ point that users knew that the developers needed to access their contacts to function and shouldn’t expect privacy.

While the California federal judge admitted that some app users probably knew that the “find friends” features meant that their personal contacts would be subject to use by the developers, they weren’t aware that that the information would be used for unapproved purposes.

However, Judge Tigar did dismiss the allegations by the plaintiffs that the value of the information in their contacts was diminished somehow by the breach of information.

Judge Tigar had tossed all but one of the allegations against the app developers in May 2014, but gave the plaintiffs leave to address his concerns. The only claim he kept was the invasion of privacy charges.

The plaintiffs are represented by Phillips Erlewine & Given LLP, the Law Offices of Carl F. Schwenker, Edwards Law, Gardy & Notis LLP, the Law Offices of Martin S. Bakst and Kerr & Wagstaffe LLP.

Apple is represented by Hogan Lovells LLP. Electronic Arts Inc. and Chillingo Ltd. are represented by ZwillGen PLLC. Rovio Entertainment Ltd. is represented by Holland & Knight LLP. Zeptolab UK Ltd. is represented by Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP. Instagram LLC and Kik Interactive Inc. are represented by Cooley LLP. Twitter is represented by Perkins Coie LLP. Yelp and Foodspotting Inc. are represented by Durie Tangri LLP. Gowalla Inc. is represented by Dhillon Law Group Inc.

The Consolidated Apple iPhone App Privacy Class Action Lawsuit is Opperman et al. v. Path Inc. et al., Case No. 3:13-cv-00453, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On Apr. 1, 2016, Apple and Path filed briefs opposing certification of this class action lawsuit that accuses Path of improperly obtaining users’ contacts stored on Apple devices.

UPDATE 2: On Apr. 22, 2016, Apple is seeking dismissal of a class action claim that it improperly helped developers of the Path social media app secretly access users’ address books.

UPDATE 3: On June 1, 2016, Twitter argued that the class action alleging its “Find Friends” app violates users’ privacy should be dismissed because the users allowed Twitter to access their personal contacts.

UPDATE 4: On Aug. 11, 2016, the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit accusing a host of app developers and Apple Inc. of improperly harvesting user data without permission argued that Twitter knowingly violated their privacy because it only began asking permission to access users’ address books after public outcry over the practice.

UPDATE 5: On Sept. 9, 2016, Yelp will continue to face a privacy rights class action lawsuit alleging it made unauthorized use of users’ address book data, following a federal judge’s denial of the company’s motion for summary judgment.

UPDATE 6: On April 3, 2017, several app companies, including Twitter, Yelp, and Instagram, asked a federal judge to sign off on a $5.3 million preliminary settlement deal that would resolve a mobile app privacy class action lawsuit.

UPDATE 7: The Twitter, Instagram, Yelp App Privacy Class Action Settlement is now open. Click here to file a claim. 

UPDATE 8: On June 6, 2018, Top Class Actions viewers started receivingchecks in the mailworth as much as $94.55 from a class action settlement over alleged privacy violations by developers of certain apps available on the iOS mobile app. Congratulations to everyone who filed a claim and got PAID!