Apple & App Creators Being Sued Over Privacy Issues

A lawsuit was filed on December 23rd by Jonathan Lalo against Apple and some application creators for sending personal information to ad networks without the consent of users.

Some of the apps named in the lawsuit include Pandora, Paper Toss, Weather Channel, Toss It, Text4Plus, The Weather Channel, Talking Tom Cat, Pimple Popper Lite, and Dictionary.com.

“Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views,” according to the lawsuit.

Also the lawsuit alleges that the ad networks are able to trace an iPhone or iPad using the unique device identifier, or UDID, which is a number specific to each unit that cannot be blocked by users. The lawsuit claims these apps are sending personal data without consent violates federal computer fraud and privacy laws. The suit is seeking class action status on behalf of all Apple iPhone and iPad users who downloaded an app between December 1, 2008, and last week, according to Bloomberg.

Apple has declined to comment on the lawsuit.