Opinion ID: 3153537
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: How the Information at Issue

Text: Was Acquired Before we can assess whether the defendants were “parties” to the electronic transmissions at issue, we must first identify what, exactly, are the transmissions at issue. In the portion of the complaint devoted to the plaintiffs’ Wiretap Act claim, the complaint states that “the [d]efendants’ third-party web tracking permitted them to information that’s being sent at that time.”). This is consistent with our understanding of the allegations of the plaintiffs, as discussed in detail below. 28 record information that [c]lass [m]embers exchanged with first-party websites . . . which [the d]efendants intercepted while not a party to those communications (hence third-party tracking)[.]”53 It continues to plead that “the defendants’ third-party tracking intercepted the class members’ communications while they were in transit from the class members’ computing devices to the web servers of the firstparty websites the class members used their browsers to visit.”54 The highly specific allegations contained in the body of the complaint, however, give no credence to the complaint’s later allegations that the defendants acquired their internet history information from transmissions between the plaintiffs’ browsers and first-party websites. With respect to the mechanics of the defendants’ acquisition of web browsing information, the interior of the complaint says that, “[u]pon receiving a []GET[] request from a user seeking to display a particular webpage, the server for that webpage will subsequently respond to the browser, instructing the browser to send a []GET[] request to the third-party company charged with serving the advertisements for that particular webpage.”55 As to Google specifically, the complaint likewise pleads that “the server hosting the publisher’s webpage . . . instructs the user’s web browser to send a GET request to Google to display the relevant advertising information for the 53 Compl. ¶ 206. 54 Compl. ¶ 208. 55 Compl. ¶ 41. 29 space on the page for which Google has agreed to sell display advertisements.”56 If users’ browsers directly communicate with the defendants about the webpages they are visiting—as the complaint pleads with particularity—then there is no need for the defendants to acquire that information from transmissions to which they are not a party. After all, the defendants would have the information at issue anyway. Underscoring that there are direct transmissions between the plaintiffs and the defendants, the complaint notes that the defendants place cookies on web browsers “in the process of injecting the advertisements,”57 which are “serve[d] . . . directly from the third-party company’s servers rather than going through the individual website’s server.”58 The complaint’s descriptions of how tracking is accomplished, meanwhile, further supports that the information was captured from the plaintiffs’ GET requests to the defendants. According to the complaint: The information is sent to the companies and associated with unique cookies -- that is how the tracking takes place. The cookie lets the tracker associate the web activity with a unique person using a unique browser on a device. Once the third-party cookie is placed in the 56 Compl. ¶ 86. 57 Compl. ¶ 45. 58 Compl. ¶ 41. 30 browser, the next time the user goes to a webpage with the same [d]efendant’s advertisements, a copy of that request can be associated with the unique third-party cookie previously placed. Thus the tracker can track the behavior of the user[.]”59 If the information at issue is sent to the defendants in the ordinary course, then this description of the cookies makes sense. This is because in such a scenario the defendants need only associate information to track it, which can be successfully accomplished by affixing an identifier to that information. This is precisely how the complaint describes the defendants’ cookies’ function. With respect to Google, the complaint pleads installation of Google’s “id” cookie, “which is a unique and consistent identifier given to each user by Google for its use in tracking persons across the entire spectrum of websites on which Google places . . . cookies.”60 Google allegedly uses this cookie to “identif[y] users,” such that “the placement of the third-party cookies, placed by circumventing Plaintiffs’ and Class Members’ privacy settings, allows this identification to take place.”61 Likewise, as to two of the other defendants, the complaint says that “[t]he spokesman [for Vibrant] admitted Vibrant used the 59 Compl. ¶ 46. 60 Compl. ¶ 95. 61 Compl. ¶ 96. 31 trick ‘for unique user identification,’”62 and that “Media’s ‘id’ cookie is just that—an ‘ID’ or ‘identification’ cookie.”63 Just as the operative allegations in the complaint tend to support the inference that the cookies enabled the defendants to identify, and thus associate, information that the plaintiffs sent directly to them in the ordinary course, the operative allegations tend to negate any inference to the contrary. This is because, if the information at issue was not sent to the defendants in the ordinary course, mere identification cookies would not be sufficient for the defendants’ scheme. To accomplish their tracking in that instance, the defendants would have needed not an associative device, but one capable of capturing communications sent by the plaintiffs and intended for firstparty websites, and then transmitting them to the defendants.64 There is no pleading of any such device, nor is 62 Compl. ¶ 151 63 Compl. ¶ 156 64 Cf. Pharmatrak, 329 F.3d at 22 (“[Pharmatrak’s code] automatically duplicated part of the communication between a user and a pharmaceutical client and sent this information to a third party (Pharmatrak).”); In re iPhone Application Litig., 844 F. Supp. 2d 1040, 1062 (N.D. Cal. 2012) (“The intended communication is between the users’ iPhone and the Wi-fi and cell phone towers, and Plaintiffs appear to allege that Apple designed its operating system to intercept that communication and transmit the information to Apple’s servers.”). 32 that function the ordinary function of a tracking cookie. As stated above, in discussing the function of the defendants’ cookies, the complaint describes them as having an associative function only.65 In view of our common sense reading of the operative allegations of the complaint, we note the factual position that the defendants advanced at argument: “The cookie doesn’t acquire anything . . . The cookie doesn’t look for anything. It just sits on the browser and gets sent along with information that would otherwise be sent.”66 The information at issue would be sent anyway because “the user’s web browser send[s] a GET request to Google to display the relevant advertising information for the space on the page for which Google has agreed to sell display advertisements.”67 We note also that, at argument, the plaintiffs’ counsel was directly asked on six separate occasions to clarify what transmissions they believed were improperly acquired and/or how the defendants’ cookies functioned.68 The plaintiffs’ counsel did not provide a direct response on any of these occasions. At the Rule 12(b)(6) stage “we accept the pleader’s description of what happened to him or her along with any 65 Compl. ¶¶ 46, 95, 96, 151, 156. 66 Oral Arg. Tr. at 25. 67 Compl. ¶ 86. 68 Oral Arg. Tr. at 9-10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. 33 conclusions that can reasonably be drawn therefrom.”69 This standard permits the dismissal of a complaint “when [the] defendant’s plausible alternative explanation is so convincing that plaintiff’s explanation is im plausible.”70 Here, the operative allegations of the complaint support only the conclusion that the defendants acquired the plaintiffs’ internet history information by way of GET requests that the plaintiffs sent directly to the defendants, and that the defendants deployed identifier cookies to make the information received from GET requests associable and thus trackable. And though the portion of the complaint pertaining to the Wiretap Act contains statements to the contrary, we need not give legal effect to “conclusory allegations” that are contradicted by the pleader’s actual description of what happened.71 In short, our understanding of the plaintiffs’ allegations is that the defendants acquired the plaintiffs’ internet history information when, in the course of requesting webpage advertising content at the direction of the visited website, the plaintiffs’ browsers sent that information directly to the defendants’ servers. 69 5B Fed. Prac. & Proc. Civ. § 1357 (3d ed.) (“Motions to Dismiss—Practice Under Rule 12(b)(6)”). 70 Starr v. Baca, 652 F.3d 1202, 1216 (9th Cir. 2011) (citing Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2); Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009); Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007)). 71 5B Fed. Prac. & Proc. Civ. § 1357. 34