Advances in technology often come with new legal challenges. As companies have increasingly looked to new website or communication technologies to better service their customers, one of those challenges has been the risk of consumer protection class actions. Nearly all companies have seen some form of a website accessibility class action under the Americans with Disabilities Act or a telemarketing class action filed under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. But companies are now facing a new threat based on the use of website “pixels” deployed on their website.

We’ve all heard the term pixel—a tiny, 1 x 1 dot or square on a computer screen or television. A website pixel is a tiny piece of html code that can be placed on a webpage or an online advertisement to collect information about a user’s interaction with that webpage or advertisement. Some of these pixels are designed by third parties and the information collected may be sent to those third parties. The aim is simple: to analyze webpage usage or improve marketing and advertising efforts. Enter the class-action threat. The plaintiffs bar has now filed hundreds of lawsuits claiming that, when these pixels send that information to a third party, they are violating common law privacy norms and a host of Cold War-era state and federal privacy statutes.