14 DAY TRIAL // Apple and several third-party application vendors have been hit with lawsuits over disclosing customer information, such as age, gender and whereabouts, without the latter’s consent, reports said this week.
One suit, brought by KamberLaw on behalf of a California resident, alleges that the companies cited are violating federal privacy laws, including the wiretapping act, for their financial gain.
KamberLaw specializes in consumer class-action suits and digital privacy, according to The Washington Post.
The paper mentions a second suit led by Dallas lawyer Majed Nachawati of Fears Nachawati, which represents consumers in Texas and California.
Similar allegations are present in this suit, according to the report.
Specifically, the suits say that the personal information negligently disclosed by Apple and third-party application vendors included users' ages, gender and location alongside a unique device identifying number, referred to as UDID.
The paper notes that Apple assigns a UDID to all iPhones and iPads, but forgets to mention the iPod touch.
An investigation carried out this month found that many popular iOS apps distributed sensitive data to third-party advertising networks without consumers' knowledge or consent.
At times, this was in violation of Apple's own privacy policy, the report claims.
"We are in a world where every pixel that appeared on a screen could be under the control of a different party, and that really made everything much more complicated," said Marty Abrams, executive director for the Centre for Information Policy Leadership, an industry-funded think tank.
"Users ought to have control over the amount of data that is sent of their activities," said Jeremy R. Wilson, a lawyer with Wilson Trosclair & Lovins who is working with Nachawati on the case. "It's an invasion of their privacy, and it's done without their consent.”