Cars.com Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Violation of California Privacy Law, Secretly Records Visitors

A California man is suing Cars.com over claims the website uses technology to secretly record visitors’ activity in violation of state privacy law.

Stephen Mason filed a class action lawsuit against Cars.com and tech company Lead Intelligence, which does business under the name Jornaya, on Sept. 30. The lawsuit alleges the companies violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act when Cars.com used Jornaya services to track his activity on the website earlier this year.

“The wiretap, which is embedded in the computer code of Cars.com, is used by defendants to secretly observe and record website visitors’ keystrokes, mouse clicks the entry of personally identifiable information in real time,” the class action lawsuit says. “By doing so, defendants have violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act.”

According to Mason and his attorneys, Jornaya created two programs for companies that do telemarketing — TCPA Guardian and LeadiD. Both “help businesses evade the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by creating evidence of purported consent to receive telemarketing calls, and to secretly collect data from website users for marketing purposes.”

Jornaya also developed a technology it calls Visual Playback, which is triggered when a consumer lands on a website; it then begins recording that consumer’s activity — their keystrokes, mouse clicks and “other interactions.”

“In short, Jornaya’s software functions as a wiretap,” the class action lawsuit says, “and Jornaya is a self-admitted eavesdropper who uses those wiretaps.”

Cars.com has used all three of Jornaya’s services, according to Mason and his lawyers. In July 2018, Jornaya announced Cars.com was using the Guardian telemarketing technology.

Mason says he visited Cars.com in July of this year while he was at home in California. During his time on Cars.com, the Jornaya programs would have affected him and for that reason he filed the class action lawsuit.

“While visiting cars.com, plaintiff was unaware at the time that his keystrokes, mouse clicks, and other electronic communications, including the information described above, were being intercepted in real-time and disclosed to Jornaya, nor did plaintiff consent to the same,” the class action lawsuit says.

State lawmakers passed the California Invasion of Privacy Act in 1967 to protect residents from unlawful recording, monitoring or eavesdropping.

Until now, the privacy law has primarily been applied to telephone activity, but some cases have been filed in recent years seeking to apply it to internet activity as well.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently heard a case brought by social media users who claimed their rights to privacy had been violated when a social media platform tracked their browser histories. The court sided with the users and found they had a reasonable expectation of privacy under the California law.

Mason’s class action lawsuit says it is unclear exactly how many potential Class Members there are, but estimates the number to be at least in the thousands.

The lead plaintiff is seeking a jury trial.

Ultimately, Mason is asking the court to find that Cars.com and Jornaya did violate California’s privacy law and to penalize them $5,000 per violation. He is also asking the court to order Cars.com to stop using the Jornaya technology to monitor the activity of visitors to its website.

Have you ever visited Cars.com? Were you aware the website might be secretly observing and recording your browsing activity? Tell us about it in the comment section below.

The lead plaintiff and proposed Class Members are represented by Joel D. Smith and L. Timothy Fisher, and Joshua Arisohn of Bursor & Fisher PA.

The Cars.com Privacy Law Class Action Lawsuit is Stephen Mason, et al. v. Cars.com LLC, et al., Case No. 4:20-cv-06847, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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