New lawsuit from Texas attorney general's office claims Netflix is 'spying' on users
A lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accuses the streaming giant Netflix of "spying" on Texans, including kids, by "illegally collecting users’ data without their knowledge or consent."
The statement announcing the lawsuit calls Netflix "a logging company that records and monetizes billions of behavioral events – and occasionally streams movies."
The streamer allegedly uses "intentional engineering to track and log users’ viewing habits, preferences, devices, household networks, application usage, and other sensitive behavioral data," according to the statement.
"Every interaction on the platform became a data point revealing information about the user," the statement says, adding that the tracking was allegedly executed on children as well as adults.
The suit accuses the company of earning "billions of dollars every year" from the data sales.
"The company also designs its platform to be addictive," the lawsuit alleges, claiming as an example that that the streamer's autoplay function "creates a continuous stream of content intended to keep users, including children, watching for extended periods of time."
Paxton's office claims these alleged actions are in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
"Netflix has built a surveillance program designed to illegally collect and profit from Texans’ personal data without their consent, and my office will do everything in our power to stop it," Paxton said in the statement, in part. “Netflix is not the ad-free and kid-friendly platform it claims to be. Instead, it has misled consumers while exploiting their private data to make billions."
"[T]his lawsuit lacks merit and is based on inaccurate and distorted information," Netflix said in a statement to ABC News. "Netflix takes our members’ privacy seriously and complies with privacy and data protection laws everywhere we operate. We look forward to addressing the Texas Attorney General’s allegations in court and further explaining our industry-leading, kid friendly parental controls and transparent privacy practices.”
