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[Lunatic_Gamer]

A lawsuit filed against GameStop accuses the company of recording its customers' conversations via its support service without their consent.

According to reports by Bloomberg, Miguel A. Licea filed the proposed class-action lawsuit on Sept. 6 in federal court in California. The reports allege that GameStop "secretly wiretaps the chat feature on its website and then shares the transcripts with a third party that harvests the data for marketing purposes." The complaint alleges that the company violated California's Invasion of Privacy Act by collecting conversations of website visitors and creating transcripts from them without obtaining any prior consent.

GameStop is one of many companies to have a chat interface on its website, where users can ask customer service questions and get help with their problems directly through the company. However, Licea claims that GameStop shares the secret transcripts with Zendesk, a software company and customer support service provider, which uses highly personal information for sales and marketing.

This lawsuit also claims that GameStop allegedly "neither informs visitors nor obtains their prior express consent to these intrusions." It also said: "rather than merely providing a software service, Defendant allows Zendesk to intercept and use the secret transcripts."

"Given the nature of Defendant's business, website visitors typically share highly personal and sensitive data with Defendant when using the website chat feature," the suit continued. "Consumers would be shocked and appalled to know that Defendant secretly creates transcripts of those conversations and shares them with a third party."

GameStop Accused of Wiretapping Customers

A recent report shows that GameStop is being accused of recording and sharing conversations made through Customer Support without consent.

www.cbr.com

 

[Scotty W]

Stop GameStonk!

 

[adamsapple]

Doesn't it always say the boiler plate 'this call will be recorded for quality and training purposes' thing like pretty much every company does ?

 

[baphomet]

Doesn't it always say the boiler plate 'this call will be recorded for quality and training purposes' thing like pretty much every company does ?

Even if they did it wouldn't cover selling transcripts to a third party.

 

[adamsapple]

Even if they did it wouldn't cover selling transcripts to a third party.

I was more focusing on the header about recording, but then again, isn't all of our data sold to advertisers anonymously anyway ?

No fan of gamestop, but this seems like kind of a flimsy lawsuit if you ask me.

 

[nush]

Doesn't it always say the boiler plate 'this call will be recorded for quality and training purposes' thing like pretty much every company does ?

Read OP again, this was the chat not the calls.

 

[Yoboman]

Americans are so lawsuit happy. At best this gets used for training purposes

AFAIK there are no marketing technologies that can turn chats into advertising lol

 

[Yoboman]

Even if they did it wouldn't cover selling transcripts to a third party.

Zendesk is a CRM program that allows for the management of customer information on the back end, they aren't selling transcripts lol.

 

[*Nightwing]

 

[Deerock71]

Gamestopo.

 

[reksveks]

Americans are so lawsuit happy. At best this gets used for training purposes

AFAIK there are no marketing technologies that can turn chats into advertising lol

I have been in programmatic advertising for around a decade (fuck that went quick) and haven't come across it but I am based in a much more restrictive political environment.

EU companies definitely won't or shouldn't touch this kinda of data, too much exposure to Pii data.

 

[jaysius]

Americans are so lawsuit happy. At best this gets used for training purposes

AFAIK there are no marketing technologies that can turn chats into advertising lol

They could sell the data to an AI company to show how to make better simulations of customer service AI. Even then they could probably fudge ”training purposes”.

This lawsuit is DOA.

 

[Bridges]

This guy just doesn't understand how customer support/ticketing systems work it sounds like.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Americans are so lawsuit happy. At best this gets used for training purposes

AFAIK there are no marketing technologies that can turn chats into advertising lol

The US TV channels I get are Buffalo affiliate stations. Whether it's US wide or it's just a Buffalo thing I dont know. But we get shitloads of Buffalo lawyer ads. Not joking at all.

 

[Yoboman]

I have been in programmatic advertising for around a decade (fuck that went quick) and haven't come across it but I am based in a much more restrictive political environment.

EU companies definitely won't or shouldn't touch this kinda of data, too much exposure to Pii data.

Yeah me too and there's no such thing as far as I know of. Maybe some behind the scenes tech feeding Facebook and Google platforms but I've never heard of it. Of course there's other ways they could use that data but the connection from passing their chat data to Zendesk and them selling chat log data seems completely unfounded unless there is more to it

 

[Bonsaibäumchen]

Hm intersting. I should check if they do that to german customers, too.
German law is very strict on these things an if they are selling or rerouting my chats to other parties for marketing purpose without my consent it would be quite dangerous for them.

 

[ManaByte]

Doesn't it always say the boiler plate 'this call will be recorded for quality and training purposes' thing like pretty much every company does ?

This is about the online chat on the website. I used it several times last year, and it doesn't say anything about that. Get fucked Gamestop.

 

[GeekyDad]

Can't imagine there's nothing to this if Bloomberg of all outlets is reporting on this. Unless perhaps it's simply part of some smear campaign on their part that has nothing to do with any of this. Either way, seems like some crazy shit. I can't see how any competent law firm would overlook or misread what is common language with regards to what customers sign off on. So, there's gotta be something going on here.