Rocket Mortgage is being accused of selling mortgage applicants' sensitive financial data to third parties, via surreptitious trackers on its website.
Gary Fedoroff, who applied online for a refinance last November, filed a class action lawsuit in a California federal court last week accusing the megalender of unlawfully disclosing applicants' information. The complaint alleging violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act suggests a potential class of hundreds of thousands of consumers.
The accusations are reminiscent of a similar complaint
The Rocket lawsuit describes third-party web trackers quietly extracting nonpublic personal information, including financial details, from consumers despite a notice that the company doesn't share information with outside parties without their consent. Fedoroff says Rocket didn't obtain his necessary consent as mandated by
The suit suggests the data was lifted by Segment, a customer data platform by cloud software giant Twilio. The plaintiff also alleges other third-party trackers from Optimizely, DoubleClick, Meta and Google.
A spokesperson for Rocket and an attorney for Federoff didn't return requests for comment Tuesday. The Detroit-based lender and servicer was separately hit with a class action steering lawsuit this week, which revived former claims brought
How Rocket allegedly tracked applicants
The complaint provided in detail how the web trackers work, suggesting Rocket was aware, and in control, of background tasks quietly transmitting consumer data to third parties.
The Segment tracker duplicates applicants' communications with Rocket, including their mortgage application information, and discloses it with advertisers. The software creates "digital dossiers" for otherwise anonymous customers, the lawsuit said.
The 35-page complaint includes screenshots of computer functions purporting to show how the Segment tracker works, although Fedoroff did not say how he learned of the process.
"Plaintiff cannot retrieve the disclosed information, cannot undo the privacy violation,
and cannot prevent Segment's ongoing commercial exploitation of Plaintiff's financial data," wrote attorneys for Fedoroff.
The lawsuit, which also alleges violations of California statutes, says it seeks an amount in excess of $5 million.
Rocket's website does say it uses web technologies including trackers, and a lengthy privacy notice discusses the company's process to develop interest-based ads.
Plaintiffs in the UWM case said they saw advertisements on Facebook and Google related to private information they uploaded to that lender's site. However, a federal judge in December ruled those consumers didn't allege sufficient facts showing a lack of consent, or disclosures exceeding what they accepted.
The UWM plaintiffs have a Tuesday deadline to refile their claims.
