Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Netflix for spying on Texans and their children by collecting data without their consent.
According to Paxton’s office, Netflix uses “intentional engineering to track and log users’ viewing habits, preferences, devices, household networks, application usage, and other sensitive behavioral data.” The data tracking applies to children’s profiles as well as adult accounts.
“But behind the scenes, Netflix quietly built a behavioral-surveillance program of staggering scale,” the lawsuit says. “At bottom, this program requires getting Texans and their children glued to the screen and then extracting every possible piece of data about them while they are there.”
“Netflix built this surveillance machinery to scrutinize how users and their children behave—what they click, how long they linger, what they avoid, when they pause, what draws them in, what they replay or skip, where they are, what devices they use, what other devices are in their home, what other apps they interact with, and much more,” the suit adds. “Each action is a data point revealing something about the user. This is not simply about deciding what show to queue up next. It is about learning who the users and their children are.”
“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,” said Paxton. “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. I will continue to work to protect Texas families from deceptive practices by Big Tech companies and ensure that corporations are held accountable under Texas law.”
A similar matter was had with Disney, as the company agreed to pay $10 million in civil penalties after violating children’s online privacy.
