CBS Watch! Subscribers’ Personal Information Shared Without Consent, Class Action Alleges

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A proposed class action claims the publisher of CBS Watch! magazine has unlawfully rented, exchanged or disclosed subscribers’ personal information to third parties without the individuals’ knowledge or consent.

According to the 27-page lawsuit, defendant CCG Ventures, who does business as CBS, has shared consumers’ names, home addresses, the titles of publications they subscribe to, and “myriad other categories of individualized data and demographic information” with data aggregators, cooperatives and appenders. These third parties have in turn passed CBS Watch! subscribers’ information on to “aggressive advertisers, political organizations, and non-profit companies,” the case alleges.

Per the suit, CBS has engaged in these data sharing practices since at least 2015 without asking for subscribers’ written consent to do so. The case stresses that the unauthorized disclosure of subscribers’ private reading information is “not only unlawful, but also dangerous” in that it can allow for the targeting of “particularly vulnerable members of society.”

The plaintiffs, three Michigan residents, claim to have received “a barrage of unwanted junk mail” as a result of CBS’s apparent data sharing practices.

CBS, on the other hand, has “profit[ed] handsomely” off customers’ information at the expense of their privacy rights, the suit contends, claiming the defendant has violated Michigan’s Preservation of Personal Privacy Act.

The lawsuit alleges CBS maintains “a vast digital database” of subscribers’ personal information that it shares with list brokers and data cooperatives, such as Nextmark and Wiland, who then supplement that data with “additional sensitive private information.” The result, according to the case, is that extensive mailing lists that “identify CBS’s customers by their most intimate details such as their gender” can then be purchased by “anybody willing to pay for it.”  This puts customers, especially the more vulnerable members of society, such as the elderly, at risk of “serious harm from scammers,” the suit says.

The lawsuit alleges that when a consumer subscribes to CBS’s publications, including CBS Watch!, they are never required to read or consent to any terms of service, privacy policy or information-sharing policy. According to the case, CBS has “uniformly failed” to obtain subscribers’ consent to share their private reading information, or even notify them of its data sharing practices.

The lawsuit looks to cover Michigan residents who, at any time within the relevant timeframe prior to July 31, 2016, had their private reading information disclosed to third parties by CBS without their consent.

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