There is a growing list of companies accused of wiretapping their website against the law and Intel is the latest to join the fray. The American chipmaker has been accused of tracking keystrokes, clicks, and cursor movements on its website.
The accusation came in the form of a lawsuit filed against Intel by a Florida state court in February. It only moved to a district court in Orlando last week.
The accusing party in the case, Holly Londers, claimed that she visited Intel’s website nearly a dozen times over the past year. She said that during her visits, the website used:
Tracking, recording, and/or ‘session replay’ software to contemporaneously intercept [her] use and interaction with the website, including mouse clicks and movements.
The lawsuit was filed under the 2020 Florida Security of Communications Act, which prohibits you from intentionally intercepting someone’s hardware without consent.
Landers’s complaint does not specify the software that was used for tracking but information gathered from one of the attorneys suggests that it could be Clicktale.
The Markup’s Blacklight privacy-focused firm did warn that Intel’s website contains a Clicktale script that has a “session recorder, which tracks user mouse movement, clicks, taps, scrolls, or even network activity.” But the firm was unable to find anything tracking keystrokes or how this data was being used.
It is not yet clear how the lawsuit will turn out. But we will likely have updates over the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
