A Massachusetts man has filed a proposed class action lawsuit seeking $5 million against the New England Patriots for alleged privacy violations.
The suit alleges that the team intentionally and knowingly discloses personally identifiable information (PII) of people using their New England Patriots mobile app to view videos to third parties, thereby violating the federal Video Privacy Protection Act.
The suit claims that, without permission, the app shares which videos users watch, their precise geolocation, and advertising IDs—to third parties including Google and Rover, which in turn use the data for targeted advertising. The complaint says users are never told that the app will share their video-viewing histories with third parties.
According to the complaint, the National Football League’s (NFL) New England franchise developed, owns, and maintains a mobile application titled “New England Patriots” that delivers live videos and other content relating to the football team. The team makes the app available for download through the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
The lead plaintiff, Anthony Serra, of Uxbridge, claims he downloaded and installed the app to his mobile phone and regularly used it to access video content. Unbeknownst to Serra, the complaints claims that the team intentionally and knowingly disclosed his PII to third parties, thereby violating the VPPA.
The suit is similar to one brought against the National Football League and its mobile app. In that case, the NFL lost a bid to completely toss the class action. A U.S. district judge in Rhode Island granted the request of the league affiliate NFL Enterprises LLC for dismissal of claims related to its app users watching of live content but allowed the action regarding claims related to watching of pre-recorded content.
Judge Allows Claim That NFL App Violates Privacy by Disclosing Personal Data to Google
The VPPA prohibits “video tape service providers” from “knowingly disclosing to any person, personally identifiable information (PII) concerning any consumer of such provider.” According to the Serra lawsuit, the statute “accounts for advancements in video-delivery technology” by defining a “video tape service provider” broadly to include any business engaged in the “rental, sale, or delivery of prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials.”
An app owner shares users’ information with Rover and Google (and its video-sharing platform Anvato) by incorporating each company’s application programming interfaces (APIs) into its app. The complaint says that when a company implements an API into its application, the API owner—such as Google—will create reports showing, for example, how many daily active users the app has and how many page views the top URLs have received. In exchange for providing these reports, the API owner, such as Google or Rover, retains and uses the data it gathers for its own purposes, such as targeted advertising.
Companies collect and leverage a user’s geolocation, which can provides street level accuracy, and other information such an advertising ID, which tracks a user’s activity across multiple mobile applications.
Rover develops data analytics and digital marketing tools for the sports industry. Rover’s clients include teams in the NFL and National Hockey League, as well as national Olympic teams.
Serra filed his suit on February 1 in federal court in Boston. Google and Rover are not defendants in the suit, The suit estimates there there are more than one million individuals whose PII may have been improperly shared with third parties via the Patriots’ app.
Topics Lawsuits
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