Cyber Liability
As the world of AI and the internet continue to grow, so has liability. Cyber Liability is a burgeoning area of litigation. There is precedent for internet platforms to be held liable for actions brought for wrongful death and crimes against children.
Also, the Florida’s Security of Communications Act (FSCA), Fla. Stat., Section 934.01, et. Seq., as applied to websites, has become a hotbed. Florida is one of a few states that requires all party consent for recordings. The act prohibits the interception of wire, oral, and electronic communications and particularly prohibits the use of pen registers and trap-and-trace devices. There are Civil remedies of $1,000 per violation, $100 per day of violation (whichever is greater), actual damages, attorney’s fees and punitive damages for violations.
In the past, lawsuits which tried to apply the act to session replay technology and mouse movement tracking were dismissed. However, a 2025 decision, W.W. V. Orlando Health, Inc., found the act applied to third party trackers which stored user searches. The offending website allowed a user to search for terms. These searches were recorded and sent to third parties, particularly, Meta and Google. Because the searched revealed a substantive message about the Plaintiff’s health concerns, it was actionable. This decision led to a surge in demand letters to various entities and will likely lead to a substantial increase in litigation in this area.
One issue is that consent banners often do not stop trackers from firing prior to the user rejecting the trackers. For example, LinkedIn has been in the news due to its extensive browser extension tracking wherein their automatic scripts scan visitors’ browsers for over 6,000 extensions and harvests data. LinkedIn did this when the website is loaded prior to any consent from the user.
A business or entity may limit exposure by requiring the user to consent to cookies prior to unnecessary trackers activating.
