Papa John's sued for 'wiretap' spying on website mouse clicks, keystrokes

I wasn't referencing intellectual property. Re-phrased: "It's their premises."

Websites are just some data and code that their servers send to my user agent. Once it's in my computer, it's under my control. Executing code and rendering elements are privileges and they can be revoked in case of abuse. If it's important enough to me I'll reverse engineer the website and write my own code to do what I want with zero foreign code execution.

It shouldn't matter the collection method. The point is that you'd be collecting these keystroke and mouse events as they happen in an environment that I, the user, may believe they are not leaving my system.

> The very same non-technical folks that you allege are misled here also have no clue how buttons work on a site either... it's all magic to those folks. Are we not supposed to do any logging now?

That's a fair point. Some users will have no idea at all what data they're sending to the likes of Facebook, for example; it's just a magic box that shows them photos of their grandkids. The test here is given the average person's understanding of the products they are using, is it reasonable to assume the data being generated is not leaving your local system? I think even the average user would assume mouse movements are not being sent away to reconstruct their session on a website down to that level of granularity. You may disagree but that's the tricky issue here: where does the line of an expectation of privacy get drawn? From a technical point of view, I'd argue it's at the separation of client-side and server-side interactions where anything not needed for the functioning of the product on the client-side remains client-side. Hence, something like my mouse movements on a run of the mill website for analytics is across that line but something like mouse movements in a multiplayer video game is not.

> Your TV tracks what shows you watch, what buttons you press, how often you skip commercials, etc.Your smart fridge tracks how often you use the ice feature, your car tracks how often you drive aggressively, etc.

The point is where does this data get sent to? Admittedly I don't know exactly what data my car collects on my driving habits, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't leave the car in that it doesn't have an Onstar-like system installed in it.

If this data is used to essentially be an observer sitting over my shoulder without telling me when I don't have a reasonable expectation that it's happening then, yes, that's a violation of an expectation of privacy. The fact that all of this is legal really demonstrates how far behind laws are to the issue of data collection around usage of services and products.

Sort of like how Apple gave users the ability to consent and they overwhelmingly withheld it (to the chagrin of FB).

If someone learns they're watched via cameras while in a grocery store, they may not be happy about it but they'll also generally recognize they're on _STORE PROPERTY_.

The key difference here is that this is being done on the _USERS_ property and you're acting as if they shouldn't have to right to withhold that consent.

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Everyone accepts that an employer may look through company emails of its employees because it goes through company equipment.

These same companies then have the unadulterated gall to turn around and try and claim they have those very same rights on _OTHER PEOPLES EQUIPMENT_.

They're laying claim to other peoples compute.

I wouldn't be surprised if Papa John's wasn't even doing any of the alleged things (I have not personally verified)... because it doesn't matter for these types of suits. The plaintiff's lawyers will conveniently ask for a settlement payout less than the estimated cost of litigation, and Papa John's will write a check to make it go away. It's how these things work.

It comes down to gut-wrenching, but basic math. It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to litigate, and the outcome is uncertain.

Writing a check for half that amount and settle this in a few months is far more desirable. Particularly for something so easy for PJ's to just remove from their site and shrug off. It's not core to their business or anything... they're not defending the right to put pepperoni on pizzas...

> Papa John had had over 40 lawsuits in the last 30 days

You mean there have been 40 complaints filed against them in 30 days. That's not surprising at all. How many of these go to court? Probably near zero... it's just the reality of lawsuits...