Lawsuits Allege Trade Desk Secretly Breaks Privacy Laws ⇥ adweek.com

Kendra Barnett, AdWeek:

Filed on March 31 in the Central District of California, one of the class action cases takes aim at The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) identifier, alleging that the tracking tech collects personally identifiable information, like email addresses and phone numbers, and uses it to enable user profiling and real-time bidding.

[…]

The Trade Desk, plaintiffs allege in this case, operates like a data broker as it tracks, profiles, and de-anonymizes internet users without their knowledge or consent via its Adsrvr Pixel, which follows users across different parts of the web and across devices.

I mentioned UID2 in passing a couple of years ago. The claims (PDF) in these lawsuits (PDF), untested in court, are certainly worrisome but only as much as any of these user identification and enrichment services. At least California has privacy laws to hold the Trade Desk accountable instead of relying on the Federal Trade Commission’s less direct processes.