Home Depot Internet Tracking Class Action Lawsuit

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Home Depot is the latest company to be charged with illegally tracking the Internet activities of its website visitors and passing the information to third parties, according to a new class action lawsuit filed February 13.

Plaintiff Amanda Bahr alleges in the class action lawsuit that Home Depot USA Inc. violated state law by hacking into her Adobe Flash Player software and using it to permanently install tracking files on her computer in order to collect her age, gender and ZIP code in addition to her  web-browsing activities without being detected. The company then shared this private information with advertisers and other third-party companies, according to the class action lawsuit.

“Specifically, the defendants transmitted Flash videos to plaintiff’s and class members’ computers, but the videos were essentially invisible, silent movies, so plaintiff and class members were not aware of the transmission,” the Home Depot class action lawsuit says. “By transmitting these invisible and silent movies, the defendants gained the opportunity to plant locally shared object tracking files in the storage of plaintiff’s and class members’ Flash player software and use those files to harvest information.”

Bahr says Home Depot’s illegal tracking activities have permanently damaged  her computer by impacting its data storage and processing capabilities. Bahr also claims that since the stolen data was valuable for marketing, research and behavioral profile purposes, that she and potential Class Members were deprived of economic benefits by Home Depot.

The Home Depot internet tracking class action lawsuit is brought on behalf of more than 1,000 Missouri residents who had their personal data tracked and stolen by Home Depot. It is seeking up to $5 million in damages for claims of trespass, unjust enrichment, invasion of privacy by unreasonable intrusion, computer tampering, and for violating the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.

The Home Depot Privacy Class Action Lawsuit case is Bahr v. Homer TCL Inc. et al., Case No. 13-cv-00274, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Bahr is represented by David L. Steelman, Stephen F. Gaunt and Patrick J. Horsefield of Steelman Gaunt & Horsefield.