NVIDIA Disregards Website Visitors’ Cookie Preferences, Class Action Lawsuit Claims

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges that NVIDIA secretly allows a bevy of third parties to use cookies to track website users’ online activity, even if a consumer has elected to decline all cookies once prompted by the tech giant.

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The 81-page complaint contends that NVIDIA effectively ignored website users’ privacy preferences by continuing to use cookies and tracking tools despite leading users to believe that they could manage or deny them and browse without being tracked or monitored.

Per the case, third-party cookies can be used to track visitor engagement, behavior, preferences, demographics, IP addresses and browsing histories, generally for the purpose of optimizing and promoting targeted advertisements based on a user’s profile. As is the case for many websites, third-party cookies are often placed by corporations—such as Meta, Google, TikTok (ByteDance), Yahoo, and Adobe—that benefit from data collection, behavior analysis and user targeting across their massive platforms used by millions.

However, many consumers, when given the opportunity, elect to disable or deny third-party cookie settings in the interest of protecting their data and browsing behavior. The plaintiff, a California resident, upon visiting the NVIDIA website, clicked the “manage cookies” option when presented with the pop-up cookie consent banner and opted to decline all cookies. He was then given the option to “decline all” non-required cookies, which meant disabling the performance cookies and advertising cookies.

“This type of tracking and data sharing is exactly what the Website visitors who clicked or selected the ‘Decline All’ button and/or by toggled [sic] off ‘Performance Cookies’ and ‘Advertising Cookies’ in the Website’s Cookie Settings window sought to avoid,” the class action lawsuit emphasizes.

As the lawsuit tells it, NVIDIA “did not abide by Plaintiff’s and other users’ wishes,” as the chipmaker continued to allow third-party cookies to monitor their behavior.

“In other words, even when consumers like Plaintiff tried to protect their privacy by declining “All” cookies, Defendant failed to prevent cookies from being transmitted to Third Parties, enabling them to track user behavior and communications,” the complaint details.

Taken together, this collected user data can be corroborated and combined with information from other online cookies to make detailed profiles of each web user in regard to behaviors, preferences, demographics, and even as far as psychological trends, intelligence, abilities, and attitudes, the complaint says.

The NVIDIA class action lawsuit looks to cover anyone who browsed NVIDIA.com after toggling off “performance cookies” and “advertisement cookies” or who selected the “decline all” button during the applicable statute of limitations period.

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