A California man has filed suit against Apple over the privacy of its apps.
Jonathan Lalo filed his complaint in California district court last week, accusing Apple of producing devices that allow ad networks to track a user's app activity.
The entire complaint has not yet been posted online, but it cites Backflip, Dictionary.Com, Pandora, and The Weather Channel as some of the offending apps.
"Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users' location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views," the suit said, according to Bloomberg.
Apple iPhones and iPads include Unique Device Identifier (UDID), which can't be blocked by users, Lalo charges. The suit says Apple's actions are a violation of federal computer fraud and privacy laws, Bloomberg reports. Lalo requests class-action status for those who downloaded apps between December 1, 2008 and last week.
The suit comes about a week after the Wall Street Journal conducted a study of 101 mobile applications and found that iPhone apps distribute more personal data without the users' permission than Android apps.
The "leakiest" apps, according to the Journal, include Pandora, Grind, Paper Toss, and TextPlus 4, which sent age, gender, ZIP codes, and user IDs to multiple ad networks. The most commonly submitted information, usually sent back to either the app maker or sold to an ad network, is the phone's unique user ID number, which can give companies valuable information on what an owner does with his or her phone.
