Brilliant Earth jewelry company’s virtual try-on feature collects detailed and sensitive biometric identifiers, including complete hand geometry scans, without disclosing they're being collected, alleged a Friday privacy class action (docket 1:23-cv-987) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago.

Stephan Clark, a plaintiff in one of the earliest-filed class actions stemming from T-Mobile’s latest data breach, believes there are enough similar cases, 11 so far, to support their “centralization” under a single U.S. district judge. So said his motion before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, dated Feb. 8 and newly docketed as case MDL No. 3073, to consolidate the 11 cases in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle where his own case is pending.

The DOJ filed a complaint Thursday in U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego on the FTC's behalf to stop a network of companies and individuals allegedly responsible for delivering “tens of millions” of unwanted VoIP and ringless voicemail (RVM) phony debt service robocalls to consumers nationwide. The case (docket 3:23-cv-00313) targets “the ecosystem of companies who perpetrate illegal telemarketing to cheat American consumers who are struggling financially,” said Samuel Levine, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection director.

T-Mobile seems “incapable of adequately protecting the information it maintains from and about its customers,” said a 17-count class action Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle (docket 2:23-cv-00211). It’s one of about a dozen complaints filed against T-Mobile since its most recent breach announcement Jan. 19.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judges appeared skeptical Friday of separate oral arguments from NAB, the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee and SoundExchange against the Copyright Royalty Board’s ruling on rates for webcast music (dockets 21-1245 for NAB, 21-1243 for NRBNMLC, and 21-1244 for Sound Exchange). Judge Patricia Millett told SoundExchange's attorney that evidence in the record "blows up" his arguments and had a back-and-forth disagreement with another lawyer over whether asking the court to calculate a rate that wasn't in the record was permissible. “Should we be doing that as a court?” Judge Florence Pan asked in response to an NRB argument that the court should use data in the record to calculate an extrapolated royalty rate. “Are you asking us to make a fact-finding that the board did not?” Millett added.

Defendant American Tower International’s removal of a state court breach of contract complaint to U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami based on the New York Convention “should be sustained,” said ATI’s opposition Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-20009) to the plaintiffs’ motion to remand (see 2302030003).

Social media companies are “ruthlessly extracting every dollar possible with callous disregard for the harm to mental health,” alleged a Thursday class action (docket 2:23-cv-00910) brought by the School District of the Chathams in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Newark. The suit is one of several filed recently by U.S. school districts -- including Mesa Public Schools in Arizona (see 2301270067) and suburban Seattle Kent School District (see 2301110029) -- hoping to force social media platforms to do more to protect minors from online bullying, predators and behaviors detrimental to their mental health.

Instagram and Snapchat are responsible for causing and contributing to “the burgeoning mental health crisis” among U.S. children and teenagers, alleged a Tuesday liability complaint (docket 4:23-cv-00646) against Meta, Snap and additional parties in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland.

Kochava filed a request for judicial notice Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Northern Idaho in Coeur D’Alene (docket 2:22-cv-00377) using comments from FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson on her plans to resign her post to support its motion to dismiss the FTC’s privacy complaint. The filing followed the FTC’s notice of supplemental authority Feb. 6 in support of its opposition to Kochava’s motion to dismiss (see Ref:2302070037]). Wilson voted with the FTC's Democratic majority in August to authorize the Kochava complaint.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Love for Eastern Texas in Tyler granted DirecTV’s motion authorizing it to effect service of process of its fraud complaint on defendant Motasim Billah via Facebook and LinkedIn because he's believed to be living in Lahore, Pakistan, with an exact address unknown, said Love’s memorandum opinion and order Wednesday (docket 6:22-cv-00423).