Oracle faces class-action lawsuit for ‘tracking’ five billion people

The legal action is being jointly led by two US privacy advocates, Michael Katz-Lacabe and Maryland associate professor Dr Jennifer Golbeck.

“Oracle claims to have amassed detailed dossiers on five billion people, and generates $42.4bn (€42.4bn) in annual revenue,” said the ICCL in a statement.

“Oracle’s dossiers about people include names, home addresses, emails, purchases online and in the real world, physical movements in the real world, income, interests and political views, and a detailed account of online activity. Oracle also coordinates a global trade in dossiers about people through the Oracle Data Marketplace.”

The lawsuit is being launched in California, which has the most advanced privacy laws in the US. It is likely to be seen as a test case to see whether the US is open to regulatory change that is more closely aligned to the EU’s GDPR laws.

Oracle, which employs 143,000 people worldwide, is headquartered in Texas. Its European headquarters is in Dublin, where it employs 1,500 people.

A similar lawsuit against Oracle and Salesforce taken under GDPR in the Netherlands was recently ruled to be inadmissible, due to a lack of verified public support for the case.

However. that case, according to Mr Ryan in court documents, prompted a change in the tracking methods that both Oracle and Salesforce used, according to court documents.

A spokesperson for Oracle told the Irish Independent that the case is “not something we can comment on”.

The ICCL currently has legal challenges under way against other tech multinationals in Ireland, Belgium and Germany.

The US legal challenge alleges various violations of both Californian and US privacy and communications laws.

“Oracle has violated the privacy of billions of people across the globe,” said Dr Ryan. “This is a Fortune 500 company on a dangerous mission to track where every person in the world goes, and what they do. We are taking this action to stop Oracle’s surveillance machine.”

Although Oracle has declined to respond to the allegations, court documents outline specifics from the three complainants on how Oracle is alleged to have tracked and surveilled them over a period of time.

Mr Katz-Lacabe said that “despite taking significant steps to maintain his online and offline privacy”, he received a document from Oracle on May 4 of this year “indicating Oracle had tracked, compiled, and analysed his web browsing and other activity and thereby created an electronic profile on him”.

Dr Jennifer Golbeck filed a similar complaint, adding that she had “visited websites where her electronic communications were intercepted by the use of Oracle JavaScript code” and that Oracle “continues to track [her] internet and offline activity, enrich the profile of her and make her personal information available to third parties without her consent”.