A woman filed a class-action lawsuit against sex toy giant Adam and Eve for allegedly handing over personal information about her provocative searches to third-party websites.
The plaintiff, identified in court documents only as “Jane Doe,” argued in a complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last week that Adam and Eve disclosed her “sexual preferences, sexual orientation, sexual practices, sexual fetishes, sex toy preferences, lubricant preferences and search terms” with Google Analytics without her consent.
The complaint also named Google as a defendant, alleging that each time the tech behemoth “read, learned from and/or utilized plaintiff’s protected sexual information,” it did so without her consent.
PHE Inc., the North Carolina-based mail-order adult products business and corporate parent of Adam and Eve, was also named in the suit, which was earlier reported on by 404 Media.
Specifically, the woman took issue with the fact that Google Analytics, which typically obscures users’ IP addresses, does not do so on the PHE-operated Adam and Eve site.
Thus, Google Analytics’ code revealed the plaintiff’s actions on the site in X-rated detail, including that she browsed Adam and Eve for “lesbian toys” and “Kingc-ck Strap-on Harness With 8-Inch Dildo,” plus added a “Pink Jelly Slim Dildo” to her cart.
The lawsuit also says that “any information submitted by consumers through the search bar on the site’s homepage is shared with Google,” which in the plaintiff’s case was a search for “strap-on dildo.”
The complaint said “website consumers did not know that the communications between them and PHE would be shared with a third party, Google.”
PHE also “did not obtain consent or authorization of website consumers to disclose communications about their private and protected sexual information,” which the lawsuit calls “an outrageous invasion of privacy [that] would be offensive to a reasonable person.”
She is suing PHE and Google for allegedly violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), which makes it illegal for businesses to record or otherwise eavesdrop on consumers without consent.
The class-action lawsuit is requesting that PHE cough up $5,000 for “each time it disclosed a message, report, or communication to Google without consent.”
Should PHE be found guilty under CIPA, each California resident who used the Adam and Eve site, navigated through its pages, entered search terms or purchased a sex toy could be entitled to a payout.
Adam and Eve is the leading online sex toy retailer, according to Statista, which found that the site draws upwards of 8 million monthly visitors and $303 million in annual sales.
The Post has sought comment from PHE, Adam and Eve and Google.
A Google spokesperson told 404 Media that the company has “strict policies and technical features that prohibit Google Analytics customers from collecting data that could be used to identify an individual.”
The spokesperson also insisted that “site owners — not Google — are in control of what information they collect and must inform their users of how it will be used.”
Representatives for Doe at Liddle Sheet Coulson law firm did not immediately respond to noti.group’s request for comment.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
