Lawsuit Investigation: Is Muscle and Fitness Violating Website Users’ Privacy?
Last Updated on February 12, 2024
Investigation Complete
Attorneys working with ClassAction.org have finished their investigation into this matter.
Check back for any potential updates and take a look at our open investigations here. The information on this page is for reference only.
At A Glance
- This Alert Affects:
- Anyone with a Facebook account who subscribed to the newsletter for MuscleandFitness.com or has a Muscle&Fitness+ account, watched videos on the Muscle and Fitness websites within the past three years, and lives in Massachusetts or California.
- What’s Going On?
- Attorneys working with ClassAction.org have reason to believe that MuscleandFitness.com and plus.MuscleandFitness.com may be using tracking tools to secretly transmit details about certain users and the videos they’ve watched to Facebook. They’re now looking into whether a class action lawsuit can be filed over potential privacy violations.
- How Could a Lawsuit Help?
- A class action lawsuit could help compensate people who may have had their privacy violated and potentially force the owner of Muscle and Fitness to change its privacy practices.
- How Much Could I Get?
- There are no guarantees as to how much money you could get or whether a lawsuit will be successful, but the federal Video Privacy Protection Act provides that consumers who had their rights violated under the law could be owed $2,500.
Attorneys working with ClassAction.org suspect that the operator of MuscleandFitness.com may have violated the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by sharing consumers’ private information without permission. They’re now looking into whether a class action lawsuit can be filed.
Specifically, they believe that MuscleandFitness.com and plus.MuscleandFitness.com may be using tracking tools to secretly transmit details about certain users and the videos they’ve watched to Facebook. This data may tie a user’s watch history to their Facebook ID, a unique identifier that can be used to match the individual to their Facebook profile.
As part of their investigation, the attorneys want to speak with anyone who:
- Subscribed to the Muscle & Fitness newsletter or has a Muscle&Fitness+ account
- Watched videos on MuscleandFitness.com or plus.MuscleandFitness.com within the past three years
- Has a Facebook account
- And lives in California or Massachusetts
How Could Muscle and Fitness Be Sharing Data with Facebook?
Many website operators gather data about the people who visit their websites by using an invisible tracking tool called the Meta (formerly known as Facebook) pixel.
The pixel, which can be embedded on any webpage, can be programmed to record every action a visitor takes, such as the buttons they click, the searches they perform and the content they view.
For MuscleandFitness.com and plus.MuscleandFitness.com, attorneys are specifically looking into whether the websites are tracking which videos users have watched – including workout videos and competitions – and sending that information to Meta along with each person’s Facebook ID. A Facebook ID is a unique identifier linked to an individual’s Facebook profile and could potentially be used to match up a specific person with their video watch history.
In general, the data collected by a website through the Meta pixel can be used by both the website operator and the social media giant to better target advertisements to their users.
It’s believed that Muscle and Fitness’ suspected data sharing practices may violate the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits “video tape service providers” from disclosing any information that identifies the video materials a person has requested or watched to third parties without their consent.
How Could a Class Action Lawsuit Help?
A successful lawsuit against the operator of MuscleandFitness.com and plus.MuscleandFitness.com could help compensate users whose privacy may have been violated and potentially force the company to change its data sharing practices.
There are no guarantees as to how much money each person could get or whether a lawsuit would be successful. However, the VPPA provides that companies may be responsible for paying consumers $2,500 for violations of the law.
Before commenting, please review our comment policy.