VONBERGEN v. BPS DIRECT, LLC

CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedDecember 5, 2023
Docket2:22-cv-04709
StatusUnknown

This text of VONBERGEN v. BPS DIRECT, LLC (VONBERGEN v. BPS DIRECT, LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
VONBERGEN v. BPS DIRECT, LLC, (E.D. Pa. 2023).

Opinion

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

IN RE: BPS DIRECT, LLC, AND : MDL 3074 CABELA’S, LLC, WIRETAPPING : : : E.D.Pa. ACTION NOS.: : 23-md-3074 : 22-cv-4709 : 23-cv-2282 : 23-cv-2287 : 23-cv-2293 : 23-cv-2294 : 23-cv-2295 : 23-cv-2306 : 23-cv-2338 : 23-cv-4008

MEMORANDUM KEARNEY, J. December 5, 2023 We today address website users’ challenges to retailers secretly tracking consumers’ keystrokes and chosen webpages while browsing the retailers’ websites. We put aside the rhetoric surrounding retailer marketing efforts versus surveillance. We must focus on the legal questions of whether website users suffer concrete injury from hidden tracking depending on what the retailer learns and, if so, whether the retailers’ conduct in tracking their website users’ conduct violates federal and state law. The website users’ first filed challenge through a Multi-District Litigation is to the use of session replay software embedded into two retailers’ websites by third party vendors who then track the website user’s conduct on the retailers’ webpages as violating federal and several differing state wiretapping acts and a variety of common law torts grounded in privacy concepts. The second challenge arises closer to home with a Pennsylvania Facebook website user purchasing a gun from the same retailer who automatically discloses his purchase to Facebook which he claims violates Pennsylvania’s wiretapping act and the nondisclosure mandates in the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act. Neither the session replay website users nor the Facebook website user allege either retailer accessed or shared their credit card, financial, or bank account data. They do not allege the retailers accessed or shared their private medical information. No website user alleges concrete specific injury arising from the retailers’ use of software to track their browsing

on the retailers’ websites. Two website users focusing on session replay software and the Pennsylvania Facebook user generally plead they purchased products from a retailer’s website. But even these three website users do not plead the retailers shared highly sensitive personal information such as medical diagnosis information or financial data from banks or credit cards. The website users do not plead facts allowing us to find Article III standing. We grant the retailers’ motions to dismiss with prejudice as to website users who cannot plead after two attempts disclosing personal credit card, financial, bank account or medical information possibly arising from a purchase from their websites. We grant the retailers’ motions to dismiss without prejudice as to the two website users challenging session replay software and the Pennsylvania Facebook

website user who allege they purchased a product from the websites but do not plead concrete injury through third party access to their highly sensitive personal information such as medical diagnosis information or financial data from banks or credit cards. We also dismiss without prejudice the Facebook website user’s alternative claim of improper disclosure under the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act. II. Alleged facts BPS Direct, LLC and Cabela’s, LLC own, manage, and operate physical retail stores known as Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s along with online websites which sell outdoor products, such as hunting gear and apparel, firearms, and camping equipment.1 Bass and Cabela’s maintain a “Privacy Policy” and “Terms of Use and Community Guidelines” across their websites.2 They place the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use on the homepages of their websites in smaller low- contrasting font at the bottom of the webpages.3 Bass and Cabela’s do not prompt website visitors to agree to or view the Privacy Policy or Terms of Use during their website visit.4 Session replay code’s function and scope.

Third-party vendors including Microsoft, Quantum Metric, and Mouseflow, created session replay code computer software allowing website operators to record and playback an individual website visitor’s browsing session and to view a website visitor’s interactions on their websites in real-time.5 Session replay code provides online marketers, advertisers, and website designers with specific insights into website visitor behavior which they can use to target website visitors with marketing and advertising content.6 Bass and Cabela’s hire third-party vendors, called session replay providers, to create and deploy session replay code on their websites to track and analyze website visitors’ activities.7 The third party session replay providers embed snippets of JavaScript computer code in www.basspro.com and www.cabelas.com.8 The embedded JavaScript computer code, or session

replay code, then deploys on each website user’s internet browser.9 When a website visitor interacts with one of these two websites, for example by clicking on a button or scrolling down a web page, their browsers transmit electronic messages in the form of instructions to Cabela’s and Bass’s computer servers operating the website.10 These messages instruct Bass and Cabela’s what content is being viewed, clicked on, requested, and imputed by the user.11 The website user’s browser will “follow the code’s instructions” by contemporaneously sending duplicate messages of the user’s communications to the third party session replay provider.12 This session replay code operates continuously during a user’s visit to the Bass or Cabela’s websites.13 Bass and Cabela’s use session replay code to capture users’ mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, zooms, window resizes, keystrokes, text entries, and other forms of a user’s navigation and interaction through their websites.14 Session replay code can capture these events at hyper-frequent intervals, often just milliseconds apart.15 Session replay code accumulates and transmits these events in blocks periodically throughout the visitor’s website session.16 The third party session

replay providers store and control the data and can then interpret and replay the data.17 Session replay providers use large swaths of data to visually recreate a website user’s visit to a particular website, often through a video replay showing the website user’s computer screen and the actions they took on the website.18 Bass and Cabela’s then use the data for commercial gain.19 Session replay code is capable of capturing nearly every action taken by a website visitor while they are on the website, including a visitor’s personal or private sensitive data depending on what the visitor does while on the site.20 Visible contents of website communications are transmitted to the third party session replay provider as Bass and Cabela’s do not use masking configuration settings and their websites transmit all captured data to their session replay providers.21

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VONBERGEN v. BPS DIRECT, LLC, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/vonbergen-v-bps-direct-llc-paed-2023.