Are you one of the bazillions that watches Netflix on their game systems, mobile devices or enabled TV sets? Current and former Netflix subscribers saw a message hit their inbox tonight informing them of a lawsuit filed against the company for allegedly holding and sharing the rental history of its customers. In other words, someone might know that your queue was filled with all the movies and television shows on Netflix that had nudity in them. Ha!
The new policy change has it to where Netflix no longer retains the rental activity for people that are no longer using the service. They are “decoupling” customers’ viewing history from their identification information for those that have not been a subscriber for at least a year.
A new website called videoprivacyclass.com details the class-action lawsuit details. Though they deny any wrongdoing, Netflix will be paying out $9 million in the settlement. Some of this will go to court costs and fees, and a bit of it will go to charity.
What a crazy lawsuit. Basically Netflix is telling me (and other former subscribers) that they’re not going to share my rental history, and that they never have anyway, and that they’re now having to pay out millions for never having done that.