Tims Coffee accused of invasion of privacy! The official pleaded not guilty and wanted to send coffee and bread in exchange for reconciliation.

As early as June 2020, the Financial Post published a piece of accurate location information that Tim Hortons (Tims), a well-known coffee chain, frequently collected and updated registered users through its official mobile app, and said it would file a class action against Tim Hortons.

According to the report, regardless of whether users were using the relevant applications at the time, Tim Hortons can still collect the registered users' place of residence, work, working time, travel place, etc., through third-party service providers, and can even analyze users' life, work and rest time, or consumption time to other chain coffee brands. The report also attracted the attention of the Office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner.

Until June 1 this year, the office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner reported that Tim Hortons's official app collected data on the specific location of users for the purpose of pushing targeted advertising and product promotion, but the company never used the data for these purposes.

According to the relevant report, Tim Hortons is suspected of violating local laws in Canada by collecting detailed user location through third-party service provider Radar without the consent of the user and without the user opening the application.

In the face of a number of class action lawsuits, Tim Hortons said publicly two days ago that the company had agreed to settle four of the class action lawsuits, but the plan had not yet been approved by the court. Tim Hortons said it was willing to provide free coffee and doughnuts to users affected by the incident. At the same time, it said that since the charges made in the class action had not been confirmed in court, the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing by the company.

In addition to proposing a settlement, Tim Hortons said that the company and third-party supplier Radar will permanently delete user information collected between April 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020. They believe that the settlement proposed by the company and the permanent deletion of user information collected during the relevant period of time is a solution beneficial to everyone because the company provides compensation of practical value.

Some local media said that such a compensation scheme is to exchange users' location information with a cup of coffee and a doughnut, which seems unfair to users. In response, a local lawyer who specializes in privacy cases said that although it is not clear how many users used the relevant applications in the 18 months involved in the case, considering that more users may be involved, although the compensation for the settlement is very small for users, it is actually reasonable.

Although the editor of the relevant report of the Financial Post pointed out in the article that Tim Hortons used the relevant application to collect the location information of the same user more than 2700 times in less than five months without the user's consent, the court did not make any confirmation of such allegations. So lawyers say that if the collection of location information is not true, users are not actually affected in any way.

At present, the Tim Hortons settlement plan is still pending, and the Quebec Court has scheduled a hearing on September 6 this year to consider the relevant settlement plan.

Photo Source: Internet

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