Class Actions Claim iHeart.com, People.com Subscribers’ Info Is Shared With Facebook Without Permission

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Proposed class action lawsuits against iHeartMedia, Inc. and DotDash Meredith, Inc. allege that the respective owners of iHeart.com and People.com secretly share digital subscribers’ personal information with Meta Platforms (Facebook) without consent.

According to the lawsuits out of Florida and New York, the defendants “knowingly” transmit users’ information to the third parties in violation of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which prohibits “video tape service providers” from sharing data on consumers’ video-viewing habits without express consent. The unauthorized disclosures to Facebook include subscribers’ unique Facebook IDs and the names and URLs of any videos they watched while on iHeart.com or People.com, the suits say.

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Because of the “automatic and invisible” manner in which users’ information is transmitted, subscribers to the websites cannot “defend themselves” against the companies’ use of their sensitive data for commercial profit, the cases charge.

The complaints contend that both iHeart.com and People.com use a Facebook tracking pixel to gather and share subscribers’ information with the social media giant. The Facebook tracking pixel—a coded tool that advertisers can embed into their websites to collect personal information and trace user activity—documents when a visitor enters iHeart.com or People.com and records what video content is viewed, the filings say. The details of the viewed content and the subscriber’s Facebook ID are then reported back to Facebook via the tracking pixel, the lawsuits claim.

Importantly, a Facebook ID can be used to identify a specific Facebook profile and see any public information that appears on the user’s personal page, the suits relay. By sharing Facebook IDs, the defendants thus “knowingly and readily” provide enough data to link any particular subscriber to their video viewing behavior—"exactly the type of personally identifiable information that [the] VPPA is intended to protect,” the cases stress.

“Defendant[s] [use] the Personal Viewing Information to build more targeted advertising on [their] website[s] which, in turn, generates greater revenue,” the filings explain.

By allegedly disclosing this data to Facebook without consent, the companies have “monetized [their] database[s]” of personal information at the expense of unsuspecting subscribers’ privacy rights, the complaints argue.

As the filings explain, the plaintiffs behind the two proposed class actions are regular users of the websites at issue—one, a Florida resident subscribed to iHeart.com since 2022, and the other, a Kentucky-based subscriber to People.com since 2020. Both plaintiffs claim to have visited the websites and viewed content while logged into their Facebook accounts, the suits relay. In doing so, the women’s valuable personal information was purportedly shared with Facebook despite neither consenting to the disclosure, the cases allege.

The lawsuits look to represent anyone in the United States with a digital subscription to an online website or app owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. or DotDash Meredith, Inc. whose personal viewing information was transmitted to Facebook.

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