N.Y. Resident Alleges GoodRx Violated State Consumer Protection Law

GoodRx has been “surreptitiously packaging and selling” customers’ personal health information as part of a “tactful and concerted action” among online advertising platforms Facebook, Google, and Criteo, alleged a class action Thursday (docket 4:23-cv-01508) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland.

Four other lawsuits have been filed against GoodRx in Northern California district court, including a March 2 complaint in San Jose. Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu ruled that Jane Doe v. GoodRx and John Doe vs. GoodRx were not related to the DOJ case against the company under her jurisdiction in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

GoodRx emailed customers in March advising them the FTC alleged the company shared their personal identifiable information July 2017-April 2020 without their permission (see 2303010034). Plaintiff E.C. of New York used GoodRx in 2018 to find prescribing pharmacies for various prescriptions of a “highly sensitive nature,” said the complaint. The prescription coupon company required him to provide information about the prescription, but he had “zero knowledge” the information, including private information and IP address, was being “packaged and sold” to the advertising defendants, the complaint said.

Between October 2017 and March 2019, GoodRx’s privacy policy said “we never provide advertisers or any other third parties any information that reveals a personal health condition or health information” but that in limited cases personal medical data would be shared with third parties, alleged the complaint. From October 2017 to October 2019, the company told customers “third parties are bound to comply with federal standards as to how to treat ‘medical data." In December 2019, CEO Doug Hirsch tweeted: “We don’t sell information and we never have,” saying people can use GoodRx without “giving us any information.”

But GoodRx uses the advertising defendants’ online tracking tools such as Facebook Pixel “as a means to intercept user’s information and data and to package this information and sell it to advertisers who use Google’s various digital properties as a way to serve advertisements,” the complaint said. GoodRx paid Meta to serve ads based on users’ prescription medication, the complaint said. GoodRx categorized users based on their health information to create “custom audiences” based on the medication they had been prescribed and then served personalized ads related to their medical treatment and prescription information, the complaint said.

Plaintiff E.C. alleges unjust enrichment and violation of New York General Business Law 349 protecting consumers’ privacy interests. Plaintiff brings the class action for actual and statutory damages, disgorgement of profits by the defendants, injunctive relief, pre- and post-judgment interest, plus reasonable attorneys’ fees and legal costs.