{"id":28860,"date":"2025-11-08T21:47:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T21:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/28860\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T21:47:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T21:47:12","slug":"autozone-owes-pennsylvania-online-shoppers-20-each-for-tracking-them-without-their-consent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/28860\/","title":{"rendered":"AutoZone Owes Pennsylvania Online Shoppers $20 Each For Tracking Them Without Their Consent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your car may be the worst at protecting your data<\/a>, but now the parts website you shop at might be just as bad. AutoZone, the company best known for catchy jingles, having the best snacks<\/a>, and selling car parts, turned out to be tracking folks on its website without the proper consent \u2014 as alleged by a recent class action lawsuit in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Sure, Tesla may be spying on its drivers<\/a>, but that’s almost expected at this point. What does a car parts company need from someone searching for a 1996 Toyota Tacoma 2.7-liter water pump gasket that it doesn’t already know? Need part, search for part, buy part. It’s a simple transaction that reminds me of the donut receipt joke by Mitch Hedberg \u2014 why complicate things?<\/p>\n

AutoZone has agreed to terms of a $1.23 million settlement<\/a> while explicitly reminding everyone that this doesn’t mean they’re guilty. Though legally accurate, c’mon man. The suit uses tons of great legalese like “contemporaneously intercept,” but what it all means for anyone affected is a $20 cash benefit.<\/p>\n

Read more: Here Are The Worst Car Myths<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the catch\"A<\/p>\n

A macro of the AutoZone.com website on the screen of a laptop. – agustin.photo\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The class action lawsuit claims that AutoZone.com was using a session replay technology that basically tracks every movement on their website. In practice, this data is analyzed by folks with marketing degrees to optimize the online experience. In theory, this is a massive breach of privacy \u2014 at least how folks in the Keystone State see it.\u00a0All this on the heels of hackers gaining access to thousands of AutoZone’s user data back in 2023<\/a>. Yikes.<\/p>\n

The users knew they were on AutoZone’s website, sure. They probably blindly accepted the cookie policy and whatever-the-heck else it said. However, Pennsylvania’s Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act (WESCA) sets a stringent all-party consent requirement. Where they say AutoZone got it wrong was not disclosing its third-party vendors for these session replay services who also had access to the data. Just like Al Capone, you may have been wiretapped, at least according to PA law.<\/p>\n

Before you run to claim your $20, there’s a massive catch. The settlement only applies to folks who were not members of the AutoZone Rewards program at the time of purchase. The only logical reason is that AutoZone’s lawyers successfully argued that by signing up for the Rewards program they had already clicked “I Agree” on a Terms of Service agreement. Buried in the fine print was, almost certainly, the consent to be monitored. Your loyalty is not to be rewarded \u2014\u00a0sorry about it.<\/p>\n

Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter<\/a> to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox, and add us as a preferred search source<\/a> on Google.<\/p>\n

Read the original article on Jalopnik<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your car may be the worst at protecting your data, but now the parts website you shop at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18621,18623,18625,18622,18626,18627,28,30,29,18624,5696],"class_list":{"0":"post-28860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-autozone","9":"tag-car-parts","10":"tag-car-parts-company","11":"tag-class-action-lawsuit","12":"tag-commonwealth-of-pennsylvania","13":"tag-mitch-hedberg","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","16":"tag-pennsylvania-news","17":"tag-robin-gentry","18":"tag-website"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}