6,000 Twitter, Instagram Privacy Class Action Settlement Claims Flagged

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.

On Wednesday, a California federal judge asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate nearly 6,000 potentially fraudulent claims of privacy violations in a class action settlement with tech giants including Twitter, Yelp and Instagram.

The settlement involves allegations the tech giants created apps for Apple Inc.’s operating systems that allowed the iOS to unlawfully upload and distribute users’ personal information without their consent. An estimated 7 million consumers may have qualified as Class Members of the proposed class action settlement.

U.S. District Judge Jon. S. Tigar preliminarily approved the app privacy class action settlement in July 2017.

The deadline to file a claim for the Twitter, Instagram, Yelp app privacy class action settlement passed on Nov. 10, 2017.

KCC Class Action Services LLC, the settlement administrator, reportedly notified the court that 5,924 claims were either duplicates or that the claimants may have misrepresented themselves.

Last month, KCC was ordered to request proof of identification to verify the identity of claimants the settlement administrator had flagged as suspicious. Only two responses were reportedly submitted, and KCC asked the court to declare all of the flagged claims to be invalid.

KCC says the flagged claims did not submit the unique claim numbers that were emailed to Class Members when notice of the class action settlement was initially sent. These claims were reportedly flagged for at least one of the following reasons: an individual filed more than one claim and attempted to conceal the duplicate claim by changing certain details; claims for different physical addresses originated from the same IP address; and/or the claims came from the same physical address and/or IP address.

Twelve IP addresses were reportedly responsible for the 5,924 flagged claims. One IP address reportedly filed 5,419 of the claims.

“The Court takes no position on whether a prosecution is or is not warranted; that decision is entirely up to the United States Attorney,” Judge Tigar wrote in his order of referral to the DOJ.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys maintain that most of the 47,000 claims without unique claim numbers that were submitted for the app privacy class action settlement were valid. They argue that many users were contacted via Twitter because their email addresses were not identified, and that these users were not provided with unique codes.

This court filing is an important reminder to consumers that they must only submit claims when they qualify as Class Members for a settlement, because they are submitting under penalty of perjury. IF YOU DO NOT QUALIFY FOR A CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENT, DO NOT FILE A CLAIM. You will be putting yourself at legal risk and your actions may cause payments to legitimate claimants to be delayed.

The plaintiffs are represented by David M. Given and Nicholas A. Carlin of Phillips Erlewine Given & Carlin LLP; Michael Von Loewenfeldt, Frank Busch and James M. Wagstaffe of Kerr & Wagstaffe LLP; Jennifer Sarnelli of Gardi & Notis LLP; Jeff Edwards of Edwards Law; and Carl Schwenker of Law Offices of Carl F. Schwenker.

The iOS App Privacy Class Action Lawsuit is Marc Opperman, et al. v. Kong Technologies Inc., et al., Case No. 3:13-cv-00453-JST, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On June 6, 2018, Top Class Actions viewers started receiving checks in the mail worth 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!