American Express Shares Credit Card Applicants’ Data with Facebook, Class Action Alleges

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges American Express has illegally shared with Facebook the communications of California consumers who applied for a credit card on AmEx’s website and were rejected. 

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The 16-page AmEx lawsuit accuses the financial giant of utilizing an embedded Facebook tracking pixel that captures the sensitive personal and financial information that credit card applicants input into AmericanExpress.com without their consent or knowledge. 

The case alleges AmEx has systematically “aided, employed, agreed, and conspired” with Facebook to intercept the communications of online credit card applicants in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act. 

The privacy class action lawsuit notes that Facebook can target users with advertising so effectively because it “surveils user activity both on and off its site.” With this data, Facebook can make inferences about a consumer’s interests, behavior and connections, creating a generalized “core audience” data set to be used by advertisers with “highly specific filters and parameters for their targeted advertisements,” the suit explains. 

“Once activated, the Facebook Tracking Pixel ‘tracks the people and type of actions they take.’ When the Facebook Tracking Pixel captures an action, it sends a record to Facebook. Once this record is received, Facebook processes it, analyzes it, and assimilates it into datasets like the Core Audiences and Custom Audiences.” 

When a consumer applies for an American Express credit card, they are required to provide not only their name, date of birth, email address and phone number but their Social Security number and sensitive financial specifics, such as their total annual income and the source of that income, the case relays. The lawsuit alleges the Facebook tracking pixel on the AmEx credit card application pages “track[s] all of the information that applicants enter” and sends the data to Facebook without the person’s knowledge or permission. 

In addition, AmericanExpress.com is loaded with code for at least nine different Facebook cookies, all of which, when a consumer is logged into Facebook while applying for a credit card, transmit their information back to the social media company, the complaint says. 

“The combination of events data and the [personally identifiable information] from Facebook’s cookies embedded on americanexpress.com permits Facebook to see sensitive financial information for specific individuals,” the lawsuit claims. 

The case looks to cover anyone in California with a Facebook account who applied for a credit card on AmericanExpress.com and had their application rejected. 

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