Report from MediaPost
In Brief – District Judge Lynn Winmill has granted final approval to a class-action settlement requiring data broker Kochava to overhaul its privacy practices following allegations that it sold users’ location data without consent. Kochava agreed to a two-year injunction that requires it to implement a robust “privacy block” designed to prevent the sharing or use of raw location data linked to sensitive sites such as health care facilities, schools, religious institutions, jails, and shelters. The company must also allow consumers to opt out of data collection through a simple web form, creating a “blacklist” to ensure that opted-out data is completely excluded from all uses, confirm that all collected data is used only for the benefit of the originating app, and discontinue using data gathered from users who did not explicitly consent. The settlement includes $1.5 million in attorneys’ fees and $2,500 payments to seven lead plaintiffs, but no broader monetary award, which the company said it could not afford. However, it does not prevent class members from pursuing future monetary damages, preserving their right to sue individually for compensation. Winmill called the agreement “fair, reasonable, and adequate”.
Context – This settlement resolves consumer lawsuits filed in 2022 and 2023 after the US Federal Trade Commission charged Kochava with acting unfairly by allegedly selling mobile device data that could expose sensitive information, such as whether people visited doctors’ offices or religious institutions. Judge Winmill has also been presiding over the FTC’s lawsuit. While the judge dismissed the initial FTC complaint as too “theoretical”, he ruled in his review of the amended complaint that it was possible that if Kochava’s business customers could purchase location data that is granular and non-anonymized that it could expose consumers “to significant risks of secondary harms” and that could be judged an “unfair” trade practice. Although the parties have reportedly been engaged in settlement talks for several years, that complaint has not been resolved and Winmill denied Kochava’s latest motion to dismiss the FTC’s complaint in February.