Online Driving School Hit with Class Action Over Alleged IL Biometric Privacy Violations

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An Illinois consumer has filed a proposed class action lawsuit against eDriving, LLC over claims that the online driver education company captures, collects and stores students’ biometric information without regard to the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Filed in circuit court, the lawsuit more specifically claims eDriving collects proposed class members’ unique voiceprints immediately upon registration for classes without complying with BIPA regulations.

The BIPA was passed by the Illinois legislature in 2007 to set reasonable regulations for companies that collect, use and store biometric information, the suit explains, with the goal of decreasing the risk of consumers’ identities being misappropriated or compromised, among other aims. According to the lawsuit, eDriving captures, collects, stores and uses proposed class members voiceprints, purportedly for identity verification, without first obtaining informed written consent. From the complaint:

“The individual voiceprints are unique to each of [the defendant’s] students, and [the defendant’s] capture, collection, storage, and use of those biometric identifiers violates each student’s substantive privacy rights protected under BIPA and exposes those individuals to serious and irreversible privacy risks—risks that BIPA was designed to avoid—including the ever-present risk of a data breach of [the defendant’s] systems which would expose students’ biometrics to hackers and other wrongdoers worldwide.”