California Privacy Class Actions Target Website Analytics Tools

There has been a spate of claims against small website operators in recent years, claiming that the pixels, cookies, and other trackers implemented on their sites violate some state or federal "wiretap" or similar laws against illegally intercepting communications. So far, these claims are being taken seriously by the courts, but have not produced much substantively for plaintiffs. Some decisions by California courts late in the summer, however, may change that. Several class actions filed in late September in California seek to capitalize.

WHY IT MATTERS

Many small website operators use tools or integration links provided by Google, TikTok, Meta, and other large companies. Those companies can then gather information about the website's users, match it up with the information they already hold about those users, and thus improve their ability to target ads and other material to those users. Often, these trackers are installed immediately upon a user's access to