Apple Sued Twice Over User Tracking

Apple is facing two lawsuits over the collection and sharing of user data with outside companies, according to an iLounge report.

Both suits—Lalo v. Apple and Freeman v. Apple—were filed in the Northern District of California; the former was first reported by Bloomberg while the latter was spotted by Wired. Both suits appear to be heavily based on research compiled and published by the Wall Street Journal, which showed that some apps send age, gender, location, and phone identifier information to ad networks without notifying the user.

The suit, filed on behalf of Jonathan Lalo, complains that "Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users' location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views."


The Freeman suit holds Apple responsible for approving the applications that track user data. "Defendant Apple, by exercising significant control over App developers and sharing profits with them, has created a 'community of interest' with the other Defendants to render them joint venturers, who are responsible for each other’s torts. Defendant Apple has also aided and abetted the remaining Defendants in the commission of their legal wrongs against Plaintiffs and the proposed class."

Lalo identifies offending applications such as Pandora, Paper Toss, the Weather Channel and Dictionary.com, naming them as defendants along with Apple. Freeman names Toss It, Text4Plus, The Weather Channel, Talking Tom Cat, and Pimple Popper Lite in addition to Apple.

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