Montana Website Tracking, Privacy & Wiretap Litigation

Published by Crandall Consulting · Informational litigation intelligence · Last intelligence update: October 12, 2026

Lawsuits, demand letters, tracked matters, and reported claims are counted separately and are not interchangeable. Last intelligence update: October 12, 2026.

Current Landscape

The supplied Montana dataset lists zero tracked lawsuits, zero tracked demand letters, and zero tracked matters. It contains no case summaries and therefore provides no allegations, holdings, standing decisions, or procedural rulings to report. These counts describe the supplied tracking inventory, not the absence of disputes statewide. The assigned risk level is Moderate, but the dataset does not explain the basis for that rating.

The dataset lists the Montana Privacy in Communications Statute (Mont. Code § 45-8-213) and technology categories covering social media, interface features, tracking tools, chat tools, mobile SDKs, connected-television tracking, and consent and opt-out controls. Their inclusion does not establish that they have been challenged in Montana.

Current Litigation Activity

Current litigation component: 0/100.

Current Filing & Litigation Trends

No filing trend can be inferred from the supplied dataset. The zero counts and absence of historical comparisons do not establish whether filings are increasing, decreasing, or absent outside the tracked inventory.

Precedent Landscape: What Courts Have Decided

Precedent component: 50/100. Litigation activity (volume) and precedential risk (authority of decisions) are measured separately — a high number of filings does not by itself indicate strong plaintiff-favorable binding precedent.

No decided precedent with a clear substantive direction is currently tracked.

A settlement is not a binding precedent, and a procedural dismissal (for example, for lack of standing) is not a holding that the underlying technology is lawful. Where courts disagree, that disagreement is reflected rather than resolved.

Current Laws & Relevant Statutes

• Montana Privacy in Communications Statute — Mont. Code § 45-8-213 · all-party consent

Regulatory Enforcement

Regulatory enforcement component: 0/100. Regulatory enforcement (agency investigations, sweeps, settlements, guidance, rulemaking) is tracked separately from private litigation and is never counted as a lawsuit.

No specific enforcement actions are itemized for this jurisdiction.

Agency Guidance

Regulatory trend: insufficient data.

Global Privacy Control / Opt-Out Signals

Currently required

GPC / universal opt-out exposure component: 80/100. This component reflects whether the state currently requires or recognizes universal opt-out preference signals (such as GPC) and related enforcement activity, and is a weighted input to the overall risk guideline. It describes the state's legal posture — never any individual website's behavior.

GPC / universal opt-out privacy rights are a different legal theory from wiretap / interception litigation, though both affect third-party website data flows.

Effective since: January 1, 2025.

Statutory baseline: Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act (Mont. Code Ann. § 30-14-2b (SB 384)).

GPC evidence confidence: 90%.

Learn more about Global Privacy Control → · How GPC posture is weighted in the risk guideline →

Changes Coming in the Next 24 Months

Forward-looking (24-month) component: 0/100. Enacted changes with future effective dates may affect a jurisdiction's forward-looking risk, but are not presented as currently enforceable.

Coming Into Effect (Enacted)

Legislation to Watch (Pending)

No pending website-privacy legislation identified for this jurisdiction in our latest research cycle.

Important Cases & Tracked Matters

No cases are currently tracked for this jurisdiction. This reflects our tracked source set, not an absence of litigation.

Technologies Appearing in Claims

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Algorithmic feeds
• Age assurance
• Push notifications
• Beauty filters
• Visible like counts
• Cookies
• Pixels
• Web beacons
• Tags
• Scripts
• Session-replay tools
• Heatmap tools
• Chat widgets
• AI chatbots
• Mobile software development kits
• Streaming and connected-television tracking
• Tag managers
• Consent management platforms
• Cookie banners
• Tags and scripts
• Mobile SDKs
• Global Privacy Control (GPC)
• browser opt-out headers

Historical Risk Guideline

What Businesses Should Review

As a practical review step, businesses may inventory the listed technologies they actually use and compare their data flows and vendor configurations with their privacy notices and user-facing controls. Relevant items include cookies, pixels, web beacons, tags, scripts, session-replay and heatmap tools, chat widgets, AI chatbots, mobile SDKs, streaming and connected-television tracking, tag managers, consent management platforms, cookie banners, GPC, and browser opt-out headers. Social-media features, algorithmic feeds, age assurance, push notifications, beauty filters, and visible like counts can also be included where applicable. These are general review suggestions, not requirements or conclusions established by the supplied case record.

Data Quality

10 source(s), 2 primary; evidence is fresh.

Methodology & Limitations

Statistics on this page are generated by the Crandall Consulting litigation intelligence engine. Publicly available sources (court and government materials, recognized legal press, professional analysis, and industry reports) are discovered through automated web research, classified into a tiered source hierarchy, and reduced to structured facts with full source provenance. Risk guidelines and evidence-confidence scores are computed by a deterministic formula from those stored facts — never by an AI model directly (AI explains findings; it never assigns a score). Counts labeled "tracked" reflect matters identified in our source set and are not official court statistics.

The overall risk guideline is composed of six deterministically weighted components: statutory structure (25%), current litigation activity (25%), prior precedent (18%), GPC / universal opt-out posture (15%), regulatory enforcement (9%), and the forward-looking 24-month horizon (8%). When a state's GPC status is limited data, that component is excluded and the remaining weights are renormalized — limited data never reads as lower exposure. Current litigation activity is measured over recent windows (velocity), not lifetime volume, so a jurisdiction with high historical activity but declining current filings reflects that decline. Litigation activity (volume) and precedential risk (authority of decisions) are measured separately. Full details are on the methodology page.

Sources

• Utah Secures $12.2 Billion Settlement With Meta Over Child Safety Practices — Governor Spencer J. Cox · Tier A (Primary authority)
• Still Tracking, Still Suing: Website Privacy Litigation After SB 690 — Bass, Berry & Sims (via Mondaq) · Tier C (Professional analysis)
• Still Tracking, Still Suing: Website Privacy Litigation After SB 690 — The Legal 500 · Tier C (Professional analysis)
• Universal Opt-Out Mechanisms: State Requirements and Penalties — LegalClarity · Tier C (Professional analysis)
• Global Privacy Control for Financial Services: A State-by-State Scope Test — RiskTemplates · Tier D (Industry data)
• Universal Opt-Out Mechanisms: Which States Require Them — CookieBeam · Tier D (Industry data)
• Universal Opt-Out Mechanism (UOOM) Compliance: What Every Business Needs to Know in 2026 — PrivacyLawMap · Tier D (Industry data)
• U.S. Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Review and Outlook – 2025 — Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP · Tier E (General web)
• Wyden Letter to Attorneys General on Global Privacy Control — Office of U.S. Senator Ron Wyden · Tier A (Primary authority)
• The US State Privacy Law Tracker for 2026: Twenty Laws, One Compliance Baseline — Consenteo · Tier C (Professional analysis)

All State Pages