A class action lawsuit has been filed against a major travel platform, alleging privacy violations through unauthorized data tracking. On April 9, 2025, Anthony D’Antonio lodged the complaint in the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, accusing TripAdvisor LLC of unlawfully collecting personal information from its website users without their consent.
The complaint centers around the installation of a tracker on users' browsers when they visit TripAdvisor's website. This tracker, operated by a third party called Index Exchange, allegedly collects sensitive data such as IP addresses and device identifiers. According to D’Antonio, this practice violates the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), which prohibits the use of pen registers or trap and trace devices without a court order. The lawsuit claims that TripAdvisor uses this data for targeted advertising, thus monetizing its platform at the expense of user privacy. "Defendant and the Third Party benefit from the Third Party’s unconsented-to collection of Plaintiff's and Class Members’ personal information," states the complaint.
D’Antonio argues that this unauthorized data collection not only breaches CIPA but also invades users' privacy by enabling detailed profiling and tracking across multiple websites. The collected data is reportedly used in real-time bidding processes to sell user profiles to advertisers, further enriching TripAdvisor and its partners. The lawsuit seeks to halt these practices and demands statutory damages for each violation under CIPA § 638.51(a), amounting to $5,000 per incident.
Represented by attorneys L. Timothy Fisher and Emily A. Horne from Bursor & Fisher, P.A., D’Antonio aims to certify this case as a class action on behalf of all affected California residents who have visited TripAdvisor's website. The case is identified as 25CV463094 and will be reviewed by Judge P. Hernandez.