Yahoo Privacy Violations Lawsuit: Illegal Tracking?

A lawsuit has been filed claiming Yahoo violated users’ privacy by illegally tracking their internet activities without permission, and attorneys are now looking to speak with more affected users to help strengthen the case.

The Yahoo privacy lawsuit, filed in April 2025, alleges that the company developed an email-based identifier called ConnectID that can be assigned to individuals and used to track their activities across a wide range of websites and apps. According to the case, Yahoo’s allegedly illegal tracking has allowed the company to build comprehensive profiles for at least 300 million users based on the information gleaned from their searches, purchases, location information and more. This information can then be used for targeted advertising purposes and to train Yahoo’s machine learning models and algorithms, according to the lawsuit.

The Yahoo privacy lawsuit claims the company collected and monetized users’ personal information without their knowledge or permission—and the attorneys now need to hear from more Yahoo users who may have been subject to privacy violations.

What Does the Yahoo Privacy Lawsuit Claim, Exactly?

The lawsuit against Yahoo says the company released ConnectID in 2020 as a way to track users across platforms and devices without relying on cookies or mobile identifiers, whose use was becoming more restricted in the interest of protecting consumers’ privacy. When a user logs into an online service offered by Yahoo or one of its partners (e.g., Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Sports, TechCrunch, AOL, Engadget, etc.), they are assigned a ConnectID based on their email address and any accompanying personal information, the lawsuit explains. Because each user’s ConnectID is linked with their email, Yahoo can bypass privacy-protecting mechanisms (such as browser restrictions on third-party cookies) to identify and track users each time they log into a website that recognizes ConnectID, the suit relays.

According to the case, Yahoo’s ConnectID is implemented across nearly 50,000 publisher domains and used across apps, websites and even connected TVs.

The Yahoo privacy lawsuit further alleges that in addition to illegal tracking, the company also uses the information collected through ConnectIDs to secretly build robust and “highly profitable” user profiles—“a key feature used to fuel [Yahoo’s] lucrative advertising business,” the case says. Per the lawsuit, Yahoo combines users’ ConnectIDs with data obtained from its websites and services, those of its subsidiaries, Yahoo’s advertising and analytics products, and its machine-learning and AI solutions—a “massive pool of profile data” that can then be used to improve Yahoo’s ability to target users with unique advertisements.

According to the lawsuit, Yahoo has violated various privacy laws by failing to obtain users’ permission to harvest and monetize their data.

“Plaintiff and Class Members reasonably expected that their online activity would not be tracked by an unknown company, let alone that it would be used to target them across online services for profit,” the complaint reads. “Yahoo did not have consent to perform this type of omni-present cross-device tracking using Plaintiff’s and Class Members’ unique identifiers and private communications.”

How Could the Privacy Lawsuit Help?

If the Yahoo lawsuit is successful, affected users may be able to get money back for any privacy violations. A class action lawsuit could also force Yahoo to stop any illegal tracking practices and change how it treats user data.

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