TECH: A class action lawsuit is being filed against HBO for sharing subscriber data with Facebook.

HBO is fac­ing a class action law­suit over alle­ga­tions that it gave sub­scribers’ view­ing his­to­ry to Face­book with­out prop­er per­mis­sion, Vari­ety report­ed. The law­suit accus­es HBO of pro­vid­ing Face­book with lists of cus­tomers, allow­ing the social net­work to match view­ing habits with their profiles.

It fur­ther alleges that HBO knows that Face­book can com­bine the data because HBO is a major Face­book adver­tis­er — and Face­book can then use that infor­ma­tion to retar­get ads to its sub­scribers. Because HBO nev­er received prop­er cus­tomer con­sent to do so, it would have vio­lat­ed the Video Pri­va­cy Pro­tec­tion Act of 1988 (VPPA), accord­ing to the suit.

HBO, like oth­er sites, dis­clos­es to users that it (and its part­ners) use cook­ies to serve per­son­alised ads. How­ev­er, VPPA requires sep­a­rate con­sent from users to share their video view­ing his­to­ry. “A stan­dard pri­va­cy pol­i­cy will not suf­fice,” the law­suit said.

Oth­er stream­ing providers have been hit with sim­i­lar claims, and Tik­Tok recent­ly agreed to pay a $92 mil­lion set­tle­ment for (par­tial­ly) vio­lat­ing the VPPA. In anoth­er case, how­ev­er, a judge ruled in 2015 that Hulu did not know­ing­ly share data with Face­book that could estab­lish an indi­vid­u­al’s view­ing history.

The law firm involved in the HBO law­suit had pre­vi­ous­ly won a $50 mil­lion set­tle­ment with Hearst after alleg­ing that it vio­lat­ed Michi­gan pri­va­cy laws by sell­ing sub­scriber data.

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