Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy Helps Secure Settlement in Landmark Privacy Litigation
In September, plaintiffs in the national data-privacy class action In re Google RTB Consumer Privacy Litigation reached a proposed settlement with Google that would allow hundreds of millions of its account holders to limit the data it transmits to companies involved in real-time bidding (“RTB”) ad auctions.
In August 2021, Judge Koh appointed Nanci Nishimura of Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy LLP to the six-person Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee overseeing the litigation. In their suit, plaintiffs alleged that Google violated its privacy promises to consumers by sharing and selling users’ personal information to thousands of advertisers and other entities participating in its RTB auctions without proper notice or consent.
If approved by the court, the settlement will require Google to implement a new RTB control that will enable users to limit the data that is shared with advertisers and to disclose key information about RTB auction practices.
According to Brian Danitz, a partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, “RTB has been called the largest data breach in history. In the blink of an eye, billions of times every day, user data is sent out to auction participants who build up detailed user profiles. If approved by the court, this landmark settlement will change the way Google handles information for millions of users in these invisible auctions and provide greater transparency and the ability to control how their information is used.”
The case is In re Google RTB Consumer Privacy Litigation Case, Case No. 4:21-cv-02155-YGR pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.