Oracle HQ in Austin, Texas
(Credit: Oracle)
American multinational tech company Oracle is facing a class-action lawsuit claiming it tracks and collects personal information on billions of people, generating revenue of over $40 billion a year in the process.
The class-action has three class representatives, including Dr. Johnny Ryan, Senior Fellow of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), and was filed against Oracle in the US District Court for the Northern District of California last week. It alleges Oracle has violated the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, California's state constitution, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, competition law, and California Common Law.
The scope of the lawsuit is huge, with the representatives acting, "on behalf of worldwide Internet users who have been subject to Oracle’s privacy violations," which therefore equates to billions of people. Legal representation is being handled by Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein.
Oracle stands accused of collecting detailed dossiers on 5 billion people, with the information gathered including names, home addresses, emails, purchases online and in the real world, physical movements in the real world, income, interests and political views, and a detailed account of online activity.
This claim is backed up by a video on the ICCL website of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison describing how the company's real-time machine learning system collects this information and confirms the 5 billion profiles stored in the "Oracle Data Cloud." The profiles are referred to as a "Consumers Identity Graph."
Commenting on the lawsuit, Dr. Ryan said, "Oracle has violated the privacy of billions of people across the globe. This is a Fortune 500 company on a dangerous mission to track where every person in the world goes, and what they do. We are taking this action to stop Oracle’s surveillance machine."
Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
About Our Expert
I started working at PCMag in November 2016, covering all areas of technology and video game news. Before that I spent nearly 15 years working at Geek.com as a writer and editor. I also spent the first six years after leaving university as a professional game designer working with Disney, Games Workshop, 20th Century Fox, and Vivendi.
I hold two degrees: a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a Master's degree in Games Development. My first book, Make Your Own Pixel Art, is available from all good book shops.
PC components and system building
Raspberry Pi
Software development
Storage technology
Video games and gaming hardware
- Adobe Drops $20B Acquisition of Collaborative Design Platform Figma
- Roadrunner Is a Reusable Vertical Take-Off and Landing Attack Drone
- Microsoft Wants Xbox Game Pass on PlayStation, Nintendo Consoles
- Microsoft Is Testing a Windows 11 Energy Saver Mode
- Google Drive's Clever Document Scanning Feature Finally Comes to iOS
- More from Matthew Humphries
