Goodyear Illegally Tracked Website Visitors’ Keystrokes, Mouse Clicks, Class Action Claims

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. has illegally “wiretapped” its website so as to monitor and record user interactions. 

The eight-page lawsuit says that Goodyear.com visitors are unaware that the company utilizes keystroke monitoring software to surreptitiously intercept, monitor and record their communications, including keystrokes, data entry and mouse clicks. 

“Defendant neither informs visitors nor seeks their express or implied consent prior to this wiretapping,” the complaint out of California alleges. 

The suit claims that Goodyear has run afoul of the California Invasion of Privacy Act. 

As the lawsuit tells it, Goodyear’s actions amount to the “digital trifecta of looking over its consumers’ shoulders, eavesdropping on consumers’ conversations, reading consumers’ journals.” Calling Goodyear’s alleged user tracking “illegal and offensive,” the suit says that a recent study by the Electronic Privacy Information Center found that nearly nine in 10 adults are significantly concerned about data privacy, and 75 percent are unaware of the extent to which companies gather, store and exploit their personal data. 

With regard to Goodyear.com, the suit says that the “chatbot” Goodyear uses on the site “convincingly impersonates an actual human that encourages consumers to share their personal information.” At the same time, Goodyear logs, records and stores consumers’ conversations with the chatbot using “secretly embedded wiretapping technology,” the case claims. 

According to the lawsuit, the “chatbot” and “replay” technology were created by third parties who license the technology to Goodyear, who routinely shares the contents of the communications for storage and data harvesting purposes. 

The case looks to represent all persons in California who, within the last year, visited Goodyear.com and whose electronic communications were caused to be intercepted, recorded, and/or monitored by The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. without prior consent. 

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