Apple hit with privacy class action lawsuit

28.12.2010
Apple has been hit by a lawsuit that alleges the company and its partners are surreptitiously collecting personal information from the users of iPhones and iPads.

A lawsuit filed December 23 in San Jose, California on behalf of Los Angeles county's Jonathan Lalo alleges that Apple and select codefendants have violated privacy and federal computer fraud statutes.

Specifically, Lalo and his attorneys--Scott A. Kamber and Avi Kreitenberg of KamberLaw LLC in New York--claim that personal information is being transmitted to advertisers via iPhone and iPads' Unique Device Identifier (UDID).

Makers of such apps as , , , and are also named in the suit, which aspires to class-action status.

Apple has stated that it doesn't allow apps to transmit user data without a user's permission. According to a , however, the lawsuit suggests that advertising networks use this data to learn which apps users download as well as how long they're used.

Additionally, it goes on to say that some applications transmit such data as a user's location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political views.