Customer Sues Adult Website for Sharing Private Informaton With Google Analytics

PHE, owner of an adult products e-commerce website, www.adameve.com, provided co-defendant Google with information that revealed plaintiff Jane Doe’s private and protected sexual information and IP address, without notifying her and without her consent, in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), alleged a class action Wednesday (docket 24ST-cv-00181) in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

PHE violated CIPA each time it disclosed Doe’s private and protected sexual information, including preferences, orientation, practices and fetishes, said the complaint. Google violated it each time it “read, learned from, and/or utilized” that information without her consent, it said. Both defendants violated CIPA by operating under an agreement whereby PHE installed Google Analytics to disclose to Google Doe’s protected and private sexual information, it said.

Plaintiff Doe, who is over 18 and lives in Los Angeles, is a consumer of PHE’s website, which collects information about its customers’ sexual lives and orientation, along with their IP address, said the complaint. The IP address identifies a specific device connected to the internet to Google, it said.

Google Analytics allows website owners to track visitor actions on their website in order to target them with personalized advertisements, said the complaint. Google collects IP addresses of individual users to “facilitate and track internet communications,” and it “can use the information that PHE is disclosing in order to identify a specific consumer’s actions on the Website,” it said.

Google offered PHE an opt-in anonymization feature for adameve.com, which Google says is designed to help website owners comply with the platform's privacy policies and the recommendations of “data protection authorities,” said the complaint. PHE doesn’t enable the opt-in anonymization feature on its website, allowing it to share with Google Doe’s online activity, and her IP address, though she didn’t consent to the information being shared, it said.

The moment Doe entered PHE’s website, her interaction was immediately and automatically sent to Google, and the specific sex toys she selected were shared with Google, the complaint said. The website also shared that Doe added the products to her cart and checked out, it said. Google is able to identify the individuals who have interacted with the PHE website, without the consumers knowing the communications between them and PHE would be shared with a third party, an “outrageous invasion of privacy,” it said.

Doe seeks awards to herself and class members of $5,000 in statutory damages for each time PHE disclosed a message, report or communication to a third party without consent; $5,000 for each time Google read, learned the contents of and used information obtained from communications between PHE and class members; and attorneys’ fees and costs. The defendants didn't comment Friday.