GEICO Unlawfully Tracks Website Users via ‘Spyware’ Technology, Class Action Alleges

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A proposed class action claims Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO) has unlawfully tracked and recorded without consent the online communications of website visitors nationwide.

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The 33-page lawsuit alleges that GEICO, for at least the past two years, has embedded “session replay” software into its online auto insurance quote form via third-party vendors such as Quantum Metric. This “spyware” technology has allowed the insurer to “surreptitiously” monitor the interactions of GEICO.com visitors in real time and record users’ behaviors on the site for later playback, the suit charges.

According to the case, the sophisticated web-tracking software can be used to capture a visitor’s every action on and communication with a website, including search terms, keystrokes, buttons clicked, pages viewed and more. In this case, the technology can also be used to intercept any personal information entered into GEICO’s online quote form, such as a user’s gender, accident history and Social Security number, the complaint adds.

As the filing tells it, the defendant “knowingly” utilizes the third-party software to track visitor activity on GEICO.com from the moment a user accesses the quote form. Unlike other website analytics tools or cookies, session replay technology is intended to monitor and record individual browsing sessions “as if someone is looking over [a user’s] shoulder,” the lawsuit explains.

Although the purpose of such web-tracking codes is ostensibly to monitor how a website’s features function, the sheer amount of information intercepted by GEICO through its third-party vendors suggests that the true purpose is for the company to gain an insight into users’ online behaviors and preferences for its own benefit, the suit contends.

The case charges that the alleged “wiretapping” of GEICO.com’s quote form is “one of the most egregious examples of such consumer tracking and Internet privacy violations.”

The plaintiff, a Pennsylvania resident, filled out GEICO’s online quote form in January 2023, the complaint says. Like other users, the man reasonably believed that his visit to the website would be private, not least because he was never presented with an explicit alert or disclosure asking for his consent to be monitored, the filing claims.

According to the case, GEICO has allegedly intercepted the electronic communications of at least 5,000 consumers nationwide who filled out the auto insurance quote form on GEICO.com.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone in the United States whose website communications were captured without consent while completing an insurance quote form through the use of session replay code embedded in GEICO.com.

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