Sportsman’s Warehouse Hit with Class Action Lawsuit for Violating Customer Data Privacy

A group of consumers are taking legal action against online retailer Sportsman’s Warehouse for knowingly disseminating their personal information to a third-party company, AddShoppers. One class member requested his data from AddShoppers, which showed he was unwittingly tracked by several companies, including Sportsman’s, for years despite never providing personal information to the retailers – a clear violation of numerous data privacy laws.  

Dwoskin Wasdin, Stueve Siegel Hanson and Parsons Behle & Latimer are pursuing a class action lawsuit against Sportsman’s Warehouse for an alleged breach of California privacy laws. The suit claims that Sportsman’s customer data was shared with the web tracking company AddShoppers, despite customers being unaware that their data was being collected.  

The complaint, filed in the United States District Court of Utah, argues that Sportsman’s participates in a “data co-op" operated by AddShoppers, which illegally collects customer data to serve targeted advertisements to consumers.  

AddShoppers is a digital commerce platform that partners with retailers, like Sportsman’s, to provide analytics into website activity with the overall goal of increasing revenue and traffic.   

According to the complaint, AddShoppers’ terms and conditions mention each retailer it partners with grants the organization a license to collect their customers data. However, the reality is that not a single customer using these retail sites is aware of AddShoppers presence, nor granted them authorization to gather their individual data via third-party tracking cookies. At a minimum, AddShoppers collects sensitive information such as the users name, address, payment information and email address.  

“The level of data sharing that tracking services like AddShoppers conduct is the modern-day version of wiretapping. Once they have your information, they can use that third-party tracking cookie to monitor your browsing activity across the internet, without you ever knowing it’s there,” said Eric Dwoskin. “As technology continues to grow and change, data privacy remains a priority concern for users. Not only did Sportsman’s violate customer trust, but they also violated major privacy laws that are in place to protect consumers.” 

The lawsuit seeks to recover damages incurred by Sportsman’s customers nationwide due to the company’s misleading tracking practices.