Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway has filed a suit against Temu, an e-commerce platform based largely in China, alleging the company uses aggressive and misleading data collection practices that harm Missouri residents’ privacy.
Temu incorporates misleading pricing, false statements about product quality, and other harmful business practices, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit alleges that the Temu app is intentionally designed to hack into devices and facilitate extensive data exfiltration. The app can evade detection of this PII theft by reconfiguring itself without the user’s knowledge or consent, even after having been downloaded.
Temu also uses large swaths of code from an earlier version of the app that was banned by the Google Play Store for serious malware concerns, according to the lawsuit. Multiple portions of Temu’s code are widely recognized by experts as spyware and malware.
Widespread illegal listings for unlicensed merchandise bearing the trademarks of the Kansas City Chiefs, St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Blues, Anheuser-Busch, Budweiser, and the University of Missouri have also been found, the lawsuit says.
Hanaway is seeking a permanent injunction prohibiting Temu from continuing to violate the rights of Missourians, civil penalties, and other relief for violation of the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.
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