On December 8, 2020, the Supreme Court heard argument in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid,1 a case addressing a split among federal circuit courts as to what constitutes an “automatic telephone dialing system”—often referred to as an “autodialer”—under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).2 The Court’s decision could significantly reduce the risk of TCPA litigation directed at online platforms … Continue Reading
On May 22, 2019, a federal district court largely denied a facial challenge by Disney, Viacom, and several online advertising networks to claims alleging these defendants violated the privacy rights of children by collecting data through online gaming apps. In McDonald v. Kiloo APS,[1] the defendants consisted of two groups: the developers who created the … Continue Reading
On May 8, 2019, the Brussels Court of Appeal referred the Belgian Data Protection Authority’s (DPA) case against Facebook to the European Court of Justice (CJEU) to address jurisdictional issues regarding which DPA is competent to bring enforcement actions against Facebook. The case deals with Facebook’s collection of individuals’ data through cookies stored in Facebook’s … Continue Reading
On April 30,2018, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a settlement with mobile phone manufacturer BLU Products and its owner over allegations that the company failed to implement appropriate procedures to oversee their service providers’ security practices, which allowed the service provider to install software containing commonly known security vulnerabilities on consumers’ mobile devices and … Continue Reading
On March 30, 2018, in Sandvig v. Sessions,1 the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that a group of academic researchers can move forward with their First Amendment challenge to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA),2 a federal law that criminalizes, among other things, accessing a computer in a manner that … Continue Reading
In a novel interpretation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware recently held in FTC v. Shire ViroPharma that the FTC had failed to plead the facts necessary to invoke its authority to sue for permanent injunction in federal court because it did not allege an … Continue Reading
Let’s face it: The residential phone line is on the verge of suffering the same fate as the 8-track tape. Anyone who doesn’t know what an 8-track tape is most assuredly uses a cell phone—and only a cell phone—to communicate. Email takes too long. And younger generations don’t even use the actual phone part of … Continue Reading
On November 29, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit joined the Third Circuit in narrowly defining “personally identifiable information” under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), holding in Eichenberger v. ESPN that the disclosure of a unique device identifier does not violate the act.1 The VPPA was passed in 1988 in … Continue Reading
In November 2017, Judge Edward J. Davila dismissed a major multidistrict litigation accusing Facebook of unlawfully tracking users’ browsing activity across websites while they were signed out of their accounts.1 The plaintiffs originally asserted several common law, tort, and statutory claims. Judge Davila dismissed most of those claims pursuant to earlier motions, leaving only the … Continue Reading
