ComScore Inc. has struck a $14 million settlement with what is believed
to be the largest class ever certified under federal electronic privacy
laws, composed of Web users who allegedly had the online analytics giant's
data-harvesting software installed on their computers without consent,
according to court documents filed on May 30, 2014. .
If approved, the pact would compensate a certified class of thousands of
individuals in a suit claiming comScore secretly surveilled them through
its proprietary tracking software OSSProxy and sold their private information.
ComScore allegedly snuck the program onto users' computers by bundling
it together with seemingly benign applications like screensavers, music
programs or games made by the company's partners.
The software constantly collects information about online activity —
search engine queries, frequently visited websites, product purchases,
ad clicks and the like — and feeds it back to comScore, which uses
it to compile Internet usage reports for a panoply of online service providers.
The $14 million will cover $4.6 million in attorneys' fees for the
plaintiffs and the remaining funds would be distributed to participating
class members on a pro rata basis, with no money reverting to comScore.
The company would also be required to alter its privacy policies and end
user license agreements to bring its disclosures in line with its data
collection practices, according to the deal.
In the complaint, named plaintiffs Mike Harris and Jeff Dunstan said the
company had violated the Stored Communications Act, the Electronic Communications
Privacy Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by covertly placing
OSSProxy on their computers without obtaining the proper consent via end
user license agreements.
The plaintiffs said they were not sufficiently informed about the tracking
program had been bundled together with the seemingly innocuous "freeware"
that they downloaded and installed.
The tracking program makes its way into target computers without initiating
any new installation process and generally without presenting any new
dialog windows to the user, according to the complaint.
OSSProxy supposedly scrubs personally identifying data like Social Security
numbers and bank information, but the suit also claimed that comScore
had breached federal law by designing the program to merely "fuzzify"
or "obscure" the information rather than making "commercially
viable efforts to automatically filter" that data before remitting
it back to the company.
Dunstan allegedly spent hours trying to remove the software and eventually
paid $40 for anti-virus software, while Harris said the program had remained
even after he uninstalled the screensaver that introduced it to his computer.
The settlement class entails anyone who had comScore's software installed
since 2005 via a third-party bundling partner. There is also a subclass
of users who were not presented with a functional hyperlink to the license
agreement.