Looks like Home Depot is caught in another privacy suit.

Home Depot, Inc. and Validity, Inc. are being sued in a putative class action alleging violations of Arizona’s Telephone, Utility and Communication Service Records Act (A.R.S. § 44-1376 et seq.).

What is this Arizona act?

Arizona’s Telephone, Utility and Communication Service Records Act prohibits a person from knowingly obtaining a “communication service record” of any Arizona resident i) without the authorization of the person to whom the record pertains or ii) by fraudulent, deceptive or false means. (A.R.S. § 44-1376.01(A)(1).

A.R.S. § 44-1376 (1) defines “communication service record” as follows: “‘Communication service record’ includes subscriber information, including name, billing or installation address, length of service, payment method, telephone number, electronic account identification and associated screen names, toll bills or access logs, records of the path of an electronic communication between the point of origin and the point of delivery and the nature of the communication service provided, such as caller identification, automatic number identification, voice mail, electronic mail, paging or other service features. Communication service records do not include the content of any stored oral, wire or electronic communication or a telephone record.”

What happened here?

Ivonne Carbajal alleges that Home Depot enabled spy tracking pixels from Validity, Inc. in its marketing emails and tracked data which she was never informed of and never provided her consent to.

The spy tracking pixels, she alleges, track all sorts of stuff – the time and place where Plaintiff and other Arizona residents opened the email, the average read time of an email, the amount of times an email was opened, whether an email was printed, whether an email was forwarded, and how long the recipient looked at the email, the device the recipient used to look at the email and even if and where you clicked within an email. Read the full complaint here.

If this is really true, this is interesting stuff.

The purpose of such tracking was to create targeted advertising campaigns for Home Depot and presumably other affiliate retailers and service providers.

Carbajal seeks to represent a class defined as: All persons in the State of Arizona who have opened a marketing email containing a tracking pixel from Defendants.

Because this case was just filed it will be interesting to see how this case progresses. More to come!

Carbajal v. Home Depot, Inc., et al., Case No.: 2:24-cv-00730-DGC