TelevisaUnivision Shared Viewing History With Facebook, Violating VPPA: Class Action

Defendant TelevisaUnivision Interactive Media “knowingly” violated the Video Privacy Protection Act by embedding the Meta Pixel tool on its website to track users’ video viewing history and reporting that history to Facebook along with their unique Facebook identification (FID) numbers, alleged plaintiff Indira Falcon’s class action Monday (docket 8:23-cv-02340) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa.

TelevisaUnivision shared the video viewing history of Falcon and her putative class members without giving them any notification and without their “informed, written consent,” alleged the class action. The unlawful conduct caused the Hillsborough County, Florida, resident and the class members “concrete harm and injuries, including violations of their “substantive legal privacy rights” under the VPPA and invasion of their privacy, it said. Falcon seeks actual damages, “but not less than liquidated damages,” of $2,500 for each VPPA violation, plus punitive damages, reasonable attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs “reasonably incurred,” it said.

TelevisaUnivision operates a website, www.vix.com, that offers prerecorded videos to individuals who subscribe to its services, said the class action. Its delivery of audio-visual materials on its website “is not ancillary to its business,” it said. Its business model “is centered, tailored, and/or focused around providing audio-visual content,” it said. It qualifies as a “video tape service provider” under the VPPA because it’s engaged “in the business of delivering audio visual materials,” it said.

The Pixel tool relies on Facebook cookies, and enables Facebook to match website visitors to their respective Facebook user accounts via their FIDs, said the complaint. An FID is a unique identifier “that is enough, on its own, to identify a person,” it said. “An ordinary person with access to a user’s FID can locate, access, and view a user’s corresponding Facebook profile by simply appending the FID” to Facebook’s website, it said.

Facebook, using the FID, “is able to identify any user on its platform,” said the class action. That in turn “allows Facebook to discern personal and identifying information about the user” because the social media company requires personal identifying information to open a Facebook account, including, name, email address, mobile phone number, date of birth and gender, it said. The Pixel tool “constantly transmits a consumer’s website activities to Facebook even if the Facebook application is running in the background of the consumer’s computer,” it said.

TelevisaUnivision, when it installed the Pixel tool, “chose certain options from a menu” of available “events” that track specific user activity “for automatic disclosure” to Facebook, said the class action. It chose for its website to disclose to the social media company “unencrypted FIDs that allow Facebook to identify any user on its platform,” plus URLs “identifying specific prerecorded videos” that Falcon and the class members requested or obtained while visiting TelevisaUnivision’s website, it said.

The Pixel tool isn’t necessary to TelevisaUnivision’s operation of its website, and TelevisaUnivision didn’t need to configure the Pixel to transmit personally identifiable information to Facebook, said the class action. Even if the Pixel were “somehow necessary,” TelevisaUnivision didn’t need to transmit personally identifiable information to Facebook “to operate its website or business,” it said.

Falcon and the class members didn’t have “a reasonable opportunity” to discover TelevisaUnivision’s unlawful conduct and violations of the VPPA because it didn’t disclose to them that it was sharing their personally identifiable information with Facebook, said the class action. Nor did TelevisaUnivision seek written consent from Falcon and the class members “prior to interception of their communications,” it said.