Lawmaker Highlights BFA Complaint Against Google Over Its Sale of Users’ Data

On March 26, 2021, Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP together with, Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC, and Pritzker Levine LLP, filed a class action complaint on behalf of Google account holders alleging that billions of times a day Google shares and sells users’ personal information with the thousands of companies that participate in Google’s digital ad auction system, called Google Real-Time Bidding (RTB). As alleged in the complaint, in the milliseconds between when a user clicks on a webpage and when the webpage loads, Google discloses a user’s information—including their account and device IDs, location, and other sensitive information about their race, religion, sexual orientation and health—to hundreds of Google RTB participants for the purpose of targeted advertising. Google’s disclosure breaks its promise to account holders that it will “not sell [their] personal information to anyone.”

In a April 1, 2021 press conference discussing a proposed Oklahoma state privacy bill, House Member Collin Walke highlighted this complaint and quoted allegations that Google sells “data relating to eating disorders, genetic disorders, Learning & Developmental Disabilities, [reproductive] health, OBGYNs, Cancer, Obesity, Depression, Infertility, Mental Health, Male Impotence and STDs.”

A copy of this complaint can be found under Downloads & Links to the right.