Oracle faces lawsuit over alleged tracking, collecting, and selling of user data

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Oracle accusing the computer software firm of purposeful surveillance of hundreds of millions of people.

The lawsuit argues that Oracle has created a network that tracks people in real-time, records the personal information of millions of people, and sells the information on to third parties.

Oracle has over 70 million active users and its most recent full-year revenue was $42.4 billion.

The suit accuses Oracle of collecting the data in various ways, such as through the use of its BlueKai tracking cookies, and then selling the information directly or through its “ID Graph” and other related products and services derived from its data.

Filing the lawsuit are privacy rights activists Micheal Katz-Lacabe and Johnny Ryan, and University of Maryland professor Jennifer Golbeck.

The plaintiffs claim to have data that proves Oracle has created profiles of them without their consent, and are asking for a halt in Oracle’s operation whilst also seeking compensation for the “financial, dignitary, reputational, and relational harms Oracle has caused”.

One of the plaintiffs, Ryan, said, “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.”

Ryan is a part of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), which also said 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.”

The lawsuit was filed last week in the Northern District of California and alleges that Oracle has violated the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Constitution of the State of California, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, competition law, and the common law.

TechInformed contacted Oracle for comment with no reply.