Playboy Settles Subscriber Privacy Suit for $3.85 Million

Playboy Enterprises Inc. has agreed to pay $3.85 million to settle a class action alleging the company traded away its Michigan subscribers’ personal information without their consent.

Mark Kokoszki alleged that the company rented its customers’ personal information—including their full names, the titles of magazines they’re subscribed to, home addresses, and demographic information—to data aggregators and cooperatives. These companies allegedly supplemented Playboy’s mailing lists with additional sensitive personal information from their own databases.

Playboy then rented the enhanced mailing lists to companies like advertisers, political organizations, and non-profits, allowing them to target Playboy subscribers by personal details like income, religion, ...