On Friday, a new far-reaching case joined the club: a class action for invasion of privacy brought against LiveRamp Holdings Inc. The plaintiffs describe LiveRamp very differently. Their page complaint, studded with footnotes, reads like a piece of investigative journalism.
That identifier is then tied to extensive online and offline personal information, including names, postal addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, as well as digital IDs used on browsers, online applications, smartphones, smart TVs and game consoles. The complaint says that the two plaintiffs in the class have seen materials from LiveRamp that contain the personal information that has been collected about them. In the case of Christina Riganian of Tujunga in Southern California, her identity profile allegedly contains several thousand pieces of information.
The materials also show that information about Riganian has been disclosed to at least 62 third parties, including pharmaceutical companies, publishers, advertisers, advertising technology companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, as well as to data brokers who can use it for resale. LiveRamp was a division of a data broker named Acxiom that was allegedly one of the companies that provided data to Cambridge Analytica that was allegedly used to target and manipulate U.
The complaint says that in , after that scandal erupted, Acxiom renamed itself LiveRamp Holdings Inc. The complaint asserts a number of legal theories but leads with the claim of invasion of privacy under the California Constitution.
Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy. California is one of a minority of American states that has an explicit protection of privacy in its constitution.
