Lovisa, Sephora Secretly Record Shoppers’ Online Chat Conversations, Class Actions Allege

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A California consumer has filed proposed class action lawsuits that respectively allege Lovisa and Sephora have unlawfully recorded and shared the online communications of consumers who visit the retailers’ websites.

The similarly worded suits say that Lovisa, a jewelry and accessories retailer, and Sephora, a cosmetics retailer, have “covertly embedded” on Lovisa.com and Sephora.com code that automatically records and transcribes the conversations shoppers have with each site’s chat feature. Moreover, the defendants allegedly allow third-party vendors to intercept and store these transcripts without informing site visitors or obtaining their consent, according to the complaints.

The lawsuits claim Lovisa and Sephora have violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) by wiretapping and allowing third parties to eavesdrop on chat conversations with “unsuspecting website visitors,” whose communications are often “private and deeply personal.”

Although compliance with the CIPA is “easy” and can be accomplished by simply informing a website visitor that their conversation will be recorded or intercepted by third parties, Lovisa and Sephora have chosen instead to ignore the state privacy law, the cases claim.

According to the suit against Lovisa, the company has allowed at least one third-party vendor, presumably Zendesk Zopim, to secretly intercept and eavesdrop upon the conversations consumers have with the site’s chat feature. The other lawsuit claims Sephora allows Hubspot and/or Salesforce to do the same.

The suits contend that due to the nature of Lovisa and Sephora’s businesses, many website visitors share “highly sensitive personal data” through the sites’ chat features and reasonably expect their conversations will remain private.

“[V]isitors would be shocked and appalled to know that Defendant secretly records those conversations, and would be even more troubled to learn that Defendant allows a third party to eavesdrop on the conversations in real time under the guise of ‘data analytics,’” the complaints read.

The two lawsuits were filed by a California consumer who claims to be a “privacy advocate with dual motivations for initiating a conversation” with each defendant. Per the cases, the plaintiff was “genuinely interested” in the retailers’ products but also works as a “tester” to ensure companies are in compliance with California privacy law.

The cases look to cover anyone in the United States who, during the applicable statute of limitations period, communicated with Lovisa or Sephora through the chat feature on their websites using a cellular telephone and whose communications were recorded or eavesdropped upon without prior consent.

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