ScreenRant Owner Valnet Must Defend California Pen Register Suit

Valnet Inc., which owns entertainment news websites such as ScreenRant and Polygon, failed to convince a federal court to dismiss a proposed class action alleging the sites contain pen registers in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act.

The complaint accuses Valnet of collecting visitors’ IP addresses and device metadata when they visit its pop culture news sites. Valnet told the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the ADNXS and OpenX tracking pixels aren’t pen registers, defined under CIPA as devices that trace outgoing signals from a specific phone or computer to their destination.

• “The ...