by Toyota found itself at the center of a scandal over tracking on its website
Toyota is facing a class-action lawsuit over an alleged violation of user privacy on its US website. The plaintiffs claim that clicking the “reject” button in the cookie pop-up did not stop the tracking of visitors.
Clicking “reject” on a cookie banner carries an unspoken promise that the site will stop tracking you. A new lawsuit claims that the US Toyota website treated this click as a mere formality.
The Essence of the Allegations
The class-action lawsuit, filed last week in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, accuses the automaker of tracking visitors to Toyota.com after they rejected third-party cookies via the consent banner that the site itself presented to them. Lead plaintiff Brittany Conner alleges that tracking technologies were placed on users’ devices regardless of their choice, transmitting data about their activity, device characteristics, and online identifiers to third parties for targeted advertising.
At the heart of the complaint is the method of “fingerprinting” — a way to identify an individual by collecting device and browser characteristics into a unique “signature” that allows tracking a user across the internet without using cookies. According to the lawsuit, Toyota used these tools after visitors selected “reject” on the banner.
Legal Context
Toyota is far from the only company facing such issues. The lawsuit is based on the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), enacted in 1967 to combat wiretapping and surveillance. Currently, law firms are using this law to fight modern web tracking. Although this act was created decades before the World Wide Web, it has proven so effective that over 800 CIPA lawsuits were filed in 2025 alone, reports Fox Business.
Toyota is not the first major company caught in this wave, and it will not be the last. Forbes Media settled a similar “tracking and interception” lawsuit for $10 million two months ago, and the Los Angeles Times paid $3.85 million to resolve its own version of this issue.
The law firm Pacific Trial Attorneys, representing Conner, did not respond to Fox Business’s request for comment. Toyota has also remained silent for now.
This case highlights the growing tension between the data collection practices of large companies and privacy laws that often lag behind technology. Using an outdated 1967 law to regulate modern digital surveillance demonstrates that the judicial system is struggling to adapt to new realities. If the lawsuit against Toyota is successful, it could set a precedent for hundreds of similar cases, forcing companies to reconsider their data handling methods and make the “reject” button a genuine tool for privacy protection, rather than just a decorative element.
