Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc. , seems to be a busy man this year! The Cupertino giant and some of the app developers have been hit by yet another lawsuit! And this time its not related to the iPad getting overheated or a flawed Macbook LCD display. Apple has been pulled to the court this time for violating privacy rights of users using its apps. More specifically the apps on the iPhone and the iPad.
The complaint was filed by Jonathan Lalo on December 23rd in San Jose, California. Lalo and his attorneys -Scott A. Kamber and Avi Kreitenberg of KamberLaw LLC in New York- claim that personal information of users is being transmitted to advertisers via the iPhone and iPads’ Unique Device Identifier (UDID). Apple iPads and iPhones are set with a UDID which can’t be blocked by users according to the complaint.
Its not Apple alone though, developers behind the specified apps such as Pandora Radio, Paper Toss, The Weather Channel, and Dictionary.com have also been included in the suit. The suit appears to be a class action status suit.
Now Apple has specifically stated repeatedly that it doesn’t allow app developers to transmit user data without the explicit permission of users. However according to a Bloomberg report, the apps are selling additional information to ad networks which includes users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views.
The Lawsuit is a claim against the transmission of such personal information which is a violation of U.S. Federal computer fraud and privacy laws. But it is however unclear whether the lawsuit is targeting a legitimate privacy issue or is objecting to the non-identifiable demographic information which is used by advertisers in targeting their content. The UDID does not specifically pin-point any user but cross referencing any anonymized personal data to a fixed identifier is viewed as a risk by privacy advocates.
Apple has refused to comment on the lawsuit and thus it remains to be seen how Apple will reply to said allegations.
The case is Lalo v. Apple, 10-5878, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
[The Bloomberg Report]