Did one of America’s biggest brick-and-mortar retail stores share customers’ private communications and health information?
That’s the allegation in a new lawsuit filed against the Costco Wholesale Corporation in Washington Western District Court.
According to the suit, customers’ information entered into the health care portion of the Costco website was shared with Facebook and Meta because of the website’s usage of Meta Pixel, which was used to “surreptitiously disclose millions of Americans’ private and protected communications, including their highly personal health information” without consent.
The lawsuit is similar to the one filed in July against Rite Aid, which alleged the same type of information was also shared with Facebook and Meta without consent through the Rite Aid site’s usage of Meta Pixel.
In the Costco suit, the information gathered was said to be generally used to “build profiles for the purpose of future targeting and marketing.”
So far, Costco has yet to publicly comment on the lawsuit.