Thomson Reuters Settles CLEAR Privacy Lawsuit for $27.5 Million

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Thomson Reuters has agreed to pay $27.5 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit that claimed it illegally sold the personal information of millions of Californians without their consent through its CLEAR public records database platform.

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The class action settlement, which received preliminary approval from the court on October 11, 2024, covers anyone who lived in California and whose information Thomson Reuters made available for sale through CLEAR without their consent between December 3, 2016, and October 31, 2024.

The deal will provide eligible class members with a proportional share of the $27.5 million settlement fund. To receive payment, class members must submit a claim form through the official settlement website, ClearPrivacySettlement.com

According to the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary approval, the “groundbreaking” settlement would also require Thomson Reuters to implement for four years several business practice changes that would give California residents more control over how their information is used on CLEAR.

“Unlike privacy cases that concern data taken directly from an individual without their consent, the data that populates CLEAR comes from other third-party sources and already exists, in large part, in the public sphere,” the motion reads. “Data privacy laws generally do not provide protection for the use of data that is already publicly available, and other courts have dismissed suits seeking relief against such practices.”

As part of the settlement, Thomson Reuters has agreed to delete locally hosted CLEAR data about California residents who submit a data deletion request and verify their identity and residency. Californians will no longer need to provide their driver’s license to make a data deletion request, court documents state. The defendant will also share verified data deletion requests with its third-party data licensors so that they can also remove the information from sources that supply CLEAR.

Additionally, Thomson Reuters has agreed to maintain a public-facing website that will provide California residents directions about how to submit a data deletion request, as well as information about CLEAR, the types of data available through the platform and the types of customers who access it.

Finally, the defendant would make a series of changes to better safeguard personal information about Californians on CLEAR, such as excluding or limiting data from default reports about their relatives, associates, licensed drivers, property owners and neighbors, unless a customer selects the option to include that additional information.

“Similarly, Thomson Reuters will reduce the number of search results that show up by default when a customer runs a person search, narrowing the field of individuals whose personal information is made available to customers running broad searches,” the motion says. “And Thomson Reuters will implement a narrow retention schedule for reports stored in customer’s search history, to prevent the undue retention of personal information beyond what is necessary for the customer’s legitimate purpose.”

Additionally, CLEAR will no longer prompt users to search its “Web Analytics” tool when a "person search" returns no results. Thomson Reuters will also significantly increase the number of annual audits it conducts to ensure CLEAR customers comply with state and federal laws and periodically assess the volume of CLEAR compliance investigations it conducts.

An amended class action lawsuit against Thomson Reuters, filed in November 2022, claimed its nonconsensual use of Californians’ data on CLEAR deprived them of “their autonomy, dignity, and ownership of their own identities.”

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