Etsy Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Alleged Pixel Tracking Privacy Violations

Etsy is facing a proposed class action alleging the company allowed third parties to collect personal information from the site’s users through the use of pixel trackers.

In a suit filed July 3 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, plaintiff Austin White claims Etsy violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) and other state law by using the pixel trackers operated by third parties like Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

According to the suit:

Through the Trackers, the Third Parties collect detailed user information including IP addresses, browser and device type, screen resolution, operating system,pages visited, session duration, scroll depth, touch movements, tap behavior, referring URLs, unique identifiers (such as cookies and ad IDs), and geolocation based on IP.

This information is used for behavioral profiling, ad targeting, cross-device tracking, and participation in real-time advertising auctions (collectively, “User Information”).

Because the Trackers capture and transmit users’ IP addresses, full page
URLs, referrer headers, device identifiers, and other non-content metadata, they function as “pen registers” and/or “trap and trace devices”.

White says he and other potential class members didn’t “consent to the installation, execution, embedding or injection” of the trackers and didn’t “expect their behavioral data to be disclosed or monetized in this way,” alleging the pixel trackers violate CIPA because the trackers are trap-and-trace devices prohibited without consent or a court order.

The suit seeks to include all individuals in California whose browsers had trackers installed or otherwise affected Etsy’s website and is asking for statutory damages, an injunction prohibiting the conduct alleged in the complaint, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

Multiple law firms are also investigating similar potential claims against eBay, though actual suits have not yet been filed.

The case against Etsy is White v. Esty Inc., N.D. Cal., No. 4:25-cv-05644