‘Illegal Wiretapping’: Lawsuit Claims Massage Envy Tracks Website Visitors’ Activity

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Massage Envy Franchising LLC faces a proposed class action that claims the company has “secretly deployed” tracking software on its website to record visitors’ electronic communications.

According to the seven-page case, the defendant has run afoul of the California Invasion of Privacy Act by using keystroke monitoring software and a chatbot feature on massageenvy.com to track “every aspect of a visitor’s interaction” with the site. The lawsuit alleges this surreptitious data collection amounts to illegal wiretapping given Massage Envy neither informs site visitors nor asks for their consent prior to tracking their interactions with the website.

“Defendant’s actions amount to the digital equivalent of both looking over a consumer’s shoulder and eavesdropping on a consumer’s conversation,” the complaint contends, claiming Massage Envy’s conduct is “not only illegal, it is offensive.”

The case more specifically alleges that Massage Envy has deployed “replay” technology on its website to track visitors’ keystrokes, mouse clicks, data entry and other electronic communications.

Moreover, a chatbot feature on massageenvy.com “convincingly impersonates an actual human that encourages consumers to share their personal information,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiff, a California consumer, says she visited the defendant’s website within the past year and communicated with the chatbot thinking it was a customer service representative. Per the suit, the plaintiff did not realize that the defendant was “simultaneously record[ing] and stor[ing] the entire conversation using secretly embedded wiretapping technology.”

The case further alleges that Massage Envy shares the contents of the “wiretapped communications” with the third parties from whom it licenses the replay and chatbot technology.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone in California who, within the past year, visited Massage Envy’s website and had their electronic communications intercepted, recorded or monitored by the defendant without prior consent.

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