Privacy Case May Come Down To Whether It Costs $12k To Uninstall An iPhone App

from the two-swipes dept

For many years, we've noted that courts have been very, very reluctant to allow lawsuits against companies who leak private data, when there's no evidence that the leaked data was used to create harm. The courts have more or less said, no harm, no broken laws. So it seemed likely that the class action lawsuit against software startup Path, for uploading a user's address book, wasn't likely to have much of a chance in court. As you may recall, earlier this year, there was a tremendous hubbub when some people realized that in order to use a "find your friends" feature, it uploaded a user's entire address book to a server. The reality is that many apps did exactly the same thing, because it made the process much easier. However, you can see why people would be quite annoyed and upset about a service grabbing their entire address book, without making it explicit that was about to happen.

Regardless, the lawsuits against Path and others didn't seem likely to have much of a chance -- but in one of the main cases against Path, the plaintiff who is trying to do a class action lawsuit came up with a way to try to show "harm," claiming that it would cost him $12,250 to hire someone to remove the Path app (though he never claimed to have actually paid that). Path responded by noting that deleting its app is "a simple act requiring no more than two swipes of his finger on his phone," and suggesting that the $12,250 is completely and totally bogus. The judge, however, is letting the case proceed, noting that at this stage of the game, it has to accept the $12,250 as true, and Path can push back on the validity of the statement later in the process.

The ruling does dismiss (while leaving open the possibility of amendment) a bunch of the claims, showing that the plaintiff, Oscar Hernandez, really tried to throw the kitchen sink at Path -- with a bunch of claims that made no sense at all. So it throws out the claim of wiretapping (no communications intercepted), the "Stored Communications Act" claim (no communications service or electronic storage as defined in the act is present), "Invasion of Privacy" under California state law (fails again for a lack of interception), "public disclosure of private facts" (nothing was publicly disclosed, so...), and trespass (he failed to show "significant impairment" as required by the law). On other points the motion to dismiss was denied, but on the whole, it seems likely that Path is going to win this case in the end. I'm just amazed at the $12,250 claim as an attempt to show "harm." They may have gotten away with it so far, but would a court really allow such a bogus claim to stand? Eventually, it's going to be shown that removing Path from an iPhone is ridiculously simple.

Filed Under: addressbook, apps, privacy
Companies: path