5 Ways to Reduce Legal Risk with Privacy Policies

Over the past few years, privacy litigation—particularly class actions—has exploded. Many data privacy class actions have been based on old laws that were even passed before creation of the internet. For example, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) was passed in 1988 after Judge Robert Bork’s video rental history was published following his Supreme Court nomination. The VPPA prohibits the sharing of a customer’s video viewing history without their express consent, including videos viewed online. The VPPA is now being used in claims over the use of a plug-in commonly known as the Meta Pixel. This line of code is embedded into a website to track the user’s web browsing activity and transfer that data to Meta to place targeted ads. Courts have interpreted that the transfer of a user’s video viewing history by the Meta Pixel is a potential violation of the VPPA.