Morgan Stanley hit with lawsuit over website tracking

Lawsuits are stacking up against wealth management firms for allegedly allowing their websites to be equipped by third parties like Google and Microsoft with tracking software used to target visitors with ads.

In the latest suit, filed Thursday in federal court in California, a man named Taajudin Elmarouk accused Morgan Stanley of allowing embedded software on its website to collect data on his current and previous browsing activities.  Elmarouk alleged that during a visit to Morgan Stanley's website last month, Google, Microsoft and other third-party firms used tracking systems to learn that he had visited sites on "debt solutions, LGBTQ opportunities and mental illness analysis." 

Elmarouk's suit, which seeks class-action status, follows two similar lawsuits filed in February against Edward Jones in federal courts in California. Both of those earlier suits allege that Edward Jones allowed its websites to be used by third parties like LinkedIn, Google and Meta to extract data in order to target certain users with online ads. 

In his suit against Morgan Stanley, Elmarouk says the firm "intentionally configured" its website to send browsing data to third parties and "permitted the Trackers to use that information for user profiling and targeted advertising." It accuses Morgan Stanley of violating the federal wiretap act and California laws against the invasion of privacy.

Morgan Stanley declined to comment for this article. Elmarouk's lawyers, Ross Cornell and Reuben Nathan, did not return requests for comment.

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Google allegedly used data for 'interest-based advertising campaigns'

Elmarouk's lawsuit provides detailed descriptions of how Google (owned by Alphabet), Microsoft and the marketing and analytics firm The Trade Desk allegedly used tracking software to harvest data that could then be used to devise targeted online ads. Regarding Google, for instance, the suit says Morgan Stanley embedded its DoubleClick advertising system onto its site.

DoubleClick will send the full web address for "each page a visitor views to Google's advertising servers, and simultaneously links browsing activity to persistent identifiers stored on the visitor's browser," according to the suit. 

"Google LLC operates one of the largest digital advertising platforms in the world, using intercepted browsing data to power interest-based advertising campaigns, real-time bidding auctions, and cross-site user profiling," the suit says.

Elmarouk, who sued the cosmetics firm Estée Lauder last year over similar allegations, contends he never consented to "the installation, execution, embedding, or injection of the Trackers on [his] devices and did not consent to the contents of [his] communications with the Website being intercepted by third Parties." 

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Edward Jones suit levels allegations against LinkedIn

The lawsuits against Edward Jones make similar accusations. One of them, filed by a California man named Vishal Shah, says Edward Jones allowed the social media site LinkedIn — which is owned by Microsoft — to install software that could track responses to an online questionnaire asking why prospective clients are looking to work with a financial advisor. Data collected that way, according to the suit, was then put toward devising ads that appear on LinkedIn, targeting the original user and people with similar characteristics.

"Such information is extremely valuable to marketers and advertisers because the inferences derived from users' personal information and communications allow marketers and advertisers, including providers of financial products and services, to target potential customers," according to Shah's suit.