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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTWESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXASAUSTIN DIVISIONMarc Opperman, Rachelle King, §Claire Moses, Gentry Hoffman, §Steve Dean, Alicia Medlock, §Alan Beueshasen, Scott Medlock, §Greg Varner, Judy Long, Guili Biondi, § Jason Green and Nirali Mandaywala, § Case No. __________on behalf of themselves and all §others similarly situated, §§
Plaintiffs,
§vs. §§ Class ActionPath, Inc., Twitter, Inc., Apple, Inc., §Facebook, Inc., Beluga, Inc. ., §Yelp! Inc., Burbn, Inc., Instagram, Inc., §Foursquare Labs, Inc., Gowalla Incorporated, §Foodspotting, Inc., Hipster, Inc., LinkedIn §Corporation, Rovio Mobile Oy, ZeptoLab UK § Jury Trial DemandedLimited aka ZeptoLab, Chillingo Ltd., §Electronic Arts Inc., and Kik Interactive, Inc., §§
Defendants.
§
P
LAINTIFFS
’
O
RIGINAL
C
LASS
A
CTION
C
OMPLAINT
“Don't take things that aren't yours.”
-
Robert Fulghum,
All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
Case 1:12-cv-00219-SS Document 1 Filed 03/12/12 Page 1 of 152
1:12-cv-00219
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Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, allege asfollows:
N
ATURE OF THE
A
CTION
1. Millions of wireless mobile device owners now keep their private address books—lists of hundreds or even thousands of personal and professional contacts—ontheir mobile wireless devices. These lists, which include contact names, phonenumbers, physical and e-mail addresses, job titles, birthdays, and other similar personalinformation amassed over the owners’ lifetimes, are some of the most personal data thatowners carry on their wireless mobile devices.
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2. The defendants—several of the world’s largest and most influentialtechnology and social networking companies—have unfortunately made, distributedand sold mobile software applications (“Apps”) that, once installed on a wirelessmobile device, surreptitiously harvest, upload and illegally steal the owner’s address book data without the owner’s knowledge or consent. As revealed in a recent N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
report,
“The address book in smartphones -- where some of the user’s most personaldata is carried— is free for app developers to take at will, often without thephone owner’s knowledge. . . . Companies that make many of the most popularsmartphone apps for Apple and Android devices — Twitter, Foursquare and
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See
Nicole Peroth and Nick Bilton,
Mobile Apps Take Data Without Permission
, N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
(online ed.atwww.nytimes.comandhttp://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/google-and-mobile-apps-take-data-
books-without-permission/Feb. 15, 2012) (emphasis added) (“The
address book in smartphones
[is]where some of the
user’s most personal data
is carried”).
Case 1:12-cv-00219-SS Document 1 Filed 03/12/12 Page 2 of 152
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Instagram among them — routinely gather the information in personal address books on the phone and in some cases store it on their own computers.* * *While Apple says it prohibits and rejects any app that collects or transmits users’personal data without their permission, that has not stopped some of the mostpopular applications for the iPhone, iPad and iPod — like Yelp, Gowalla, Hipsterand Foodspotting — from taking users’ contacts and transmitting it without theirknowledge.”
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3. Literally billions of contacts from the address books of tens of millions ofunsuspecting wireless mobile device owners have now been accessed and stolen. Thesurreptitious data uploads—occurring over both cellular networks and open, publicwireless access nodes in homes, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, stores and businesses allacross the nation—have, quite literally, turned the address book owners’ wirelessmobile devices into mobile radio beacons broadcasting and publicly exposing theunsuspecting device owner’s address book data to the world.4. This class action lawsuit seeks to halt and prevent these unconscionable,illegal practices, to mandate fixes to these mobile devices and Apps to prevent theseinvasions of users’ privacy and the unauthorized access and/or transfer of unencryptedaddress book data, to require that all wrongfully-obtained data be permanently purged,to impose constructive trusts over the associated benefits these defendants wrongfullyand unjustly realized from the stolen data, and to recover damages for the harmsuffered by the Plaintiffs and millions of other unsuspecting wireless mobile deviceowners whose data has been stolen and whose privacy has been severely compromised.
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See id.
Case 1:12-cv-00219-SS Document 1 Filed 03/12/12 Page 3 of 152
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