GoKawiilJoe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR An anonymous user has filed a proposed class action suit against Perplexity, Google, and Meta for alleged mishandling of private info.
The suit accuses Perplexity of sending chat content to Google and Meta for purposes of ad tracking without obtaining user consent.
It’s early days in this case, but penalties could be steep at $5,000 or more per violation.
Perplexity and other tech companies are in hot water for allegedly violating users’ privacy. A proposed class action filed by an anonymous Perplexity user this week accuses the AI firm of sharing sensitive information with both Google and Meta without user consent, even information entered into Perplexity’s ostensibly privacy-focused Incognito Mode.
As Ars Technica reports, the suit accuses Perplexity of using ad trackers from both Google and Meta without disclosing those integrations to users, comparing the low-profile trackers to wiretaps. User information gathered from Perplexity interactions is shared with both other companies, the complaint alleges, in order to target ads based on that info.
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The suit says that initial prompts entered into Perplexity by users signed into Perplexity accounts are always fed into Google’s and Meta’s ad platforms, and so are any reply options the user clicks on throughout the interaction. In the case of users who aren’t signed in, “the entire conversation may be accessed by third parties like Meta and Google.”
Data shared with Google and Meta by Perplexity allegedly includes personally identifiable information, regardless of whether that information was entered into Perplexity’s Incognito Mode (which the suit calls a “sham”).
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