Fubo has agreed to pay $3.4 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused the sports-streaming service provider of unlawfully distributing customers’ personally identifiable information (PII) without their consent.
In December 2023, Ne’Tosha Burdette filed a complaint [PDF] against Fubo with the stated goal of stopping Fubo’s “unlawful disclosure of its customers'” PII. The complaint argued that Fubo violated the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), “which prohibits the disclosure of consumers’ video viewing history without their informed, written consent.” The filing added:
Critically, Defendant utilizes sophisticated tracking technology that collects its subscribers’ personally identifiable information… including information which identifies a person as having viewed specific videos on Defendant’s streaming service. Defendant knowingly discloses this information to third party advertisers so that they can target specific users with specifically tailored advertisements based on their viewing history.
Fubo’s privacy policy at the time stated that Fubo collected various data from its users, such as location information—including “precise or near-precise geolocation” and the use of “GPS coordinates”—as well as device and usage information (including “pages and content viewed and order of those pages” and “content recorded on FuboTV,”) per the complaint.
According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, in late 2023, Fubo’s privacy policy claimed that the firm would only share non-personally identifiable information with third parties unless Fubo obtained user consent. However, Burdette’s filing claimed that Fubo didn’t ask users who created accounts for consent to share their PII with third parties.
“By disclosing Plaintiff’s PII, which reveals both her identity and the video materials she has requested from Defendant’s services to third-parties, Defendant has intentionally and knowingly violated the VPPA and Plaintiff’s privacy rights,” the complaint said.
