Apple Hit With Lawsuit After Allegedly Selling Customer Information

Apple has recently been accused by some of its customers of selling their information. The process of selling information goes against the company’s own privacy policies. Here’s what we know about this case.

According to Time, three iTunes customers from Michigan and Rhode Island filed a federal court case against the smartphone giant. These customers aim to represent their home states where Apple owners supposedly had their personal information revealed. Selling off the information goes against Apple's policy of “whatever happens in your iPhone stays in your iPhone.”

The complainants said that selling off their information is unlawful and helps people who want to target vulnerable persons. The lawsuit also noted that Apple is reportedly able to sell lists of people depending on their product and content preferences. The complainants alleged that these actions compromise Apple owners’ identity and can be abused.

To compensate for this problem, the complainants seek to be paid for damages according to their state’s laws. The group seeks to obtain $250 for each Rhode Island iTunes user who had their information revealed. Meanwhile, the group also want to collect $5,000 for each Michigan user if they win this case.

So far, Apple has yet to respond to this lawsuit. The case is named as Wheaton v Apple .,19-cv-02883, U.S District Court, Northern District of California.

Previously, Apple has taken a stance where it policed apps that take users’ health data without their knowledge. Similar to the idea noted in the lawsuit, these apps would sell the health information to help tailor ads to these people. Once sold, these users who’ve trusted these apps would start seeing ads about related medicine to the illnesses they’ve just described on their phone.

Apple has also policed some apps which have attempted to use corporate-grade technology to provide child monitoring services to parents through an app.

However, Apple has personally stopped these apps as their technology is too risky to use outside of business networks. Lastly, Apple wants a lawsuit over their Apple Watch batteries dumped as the complainant failed to meet with the court's standards.

For now, we’ll have to wait for Apple’s statement about this issue and how this lawsuit will end.