Texas Website Tracking, Privacy & Wiretap Litigation

Published by Crandall Consulting · Informational litigation intelligence · Last intelligence update: October 13, 2026

Lawsuits, demand letters, tracked matters, and reported claims are counted separately and are not interchangeable. Last intelligence update: October 13, 2026.

Current Landscape

The supplied Texas dataset lists zero lawsuits, zero demand letters, and zero tracked matters, and contains no case summaries. These counts describe the supplied record, not the existence or absence of matters outside it. The informational risk level is Moderate; the facts do not explain that rating or establish any level of court or litigant attention.

The record lists the Texas Criminal Wiretap Act (Tex. Penal Code § 16.02) and the Texas Civil Interception Statute (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 123.002). It also lists technologies and mechanisms including cookies, pixels, analytics tools, search bars, ACR, smart televisions, browser identifiers, IP address collection, pen registers, trap and trace devices, SDKs, device fingerprinting, chat widgets, session-replay tools, consent banners, GPC, browser opt-out headers, and the Sec-GPC HTTP header. Their inclusion does not establish that any particular use has been challenged or addressed by a Texas court.

Current Litigation Activity

Current litigation component: 0/100.

Current Filing & Litigation Trends

No Texas filing or demand-letter trend can be established from the supplied record. The zero counts and absence of case summaries provide no historical comparison, and the technology list alone does not demonstrate litigation activity or increased scrutiny.

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

• Texas Criminal Wiretap Act — Tex. Penal Code § 16.02
• Texas Civil Interception Statute — Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 123.002 · private right of action · statutory damages

Regulatory Enforcement

Regulatory enforcement component: 50/100. Regulatory enforcement (agency investigations, sweeps, settlements, guidance, rulemaking) is tracked separately from private litigation and is never counted as a lawsuit.

• Texas Attorney General settlement with LG concerning smart TV viewing data — Office of the Attorney General of Texas
  The Attorney General announced a settlement with LG following a lawsuit concerning smart TV viewing-data collection.

Agency Guidance

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Regulatory trend: active.

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: Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 541.055(e)).

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

• cookies
• pixels
• analytics tools
• search bars
• Automated Content Recognition (ACR)
• Smart televisions
• Third-party cookies
• Browser identifiers
• Cookie consent banner
• Third-party website trackers
• Cookies
• Pixels
• IP address collection
• Pen registers
• Trap and trace devices
• Social media pixel
• Software development kit (SDK)
• Device fingerprinting
• analytics software
• chat widgets
• session-replay tools
• consent mechanisms
• Global Privacy Control (GPC)
• browser opt-out headers
• Sec-GPC HTTP header

Historical Risk Guideline

What Businesses Should Review

As practical review topics, businesses may consider documenting their use of the listed technologies, mapping data collection and third-party integrations, and comparing actual behavior with disclosures and consent or opt-out configurations. Review may include cookies, pixels, analytics, session replay, chat widgets, SDKs, identifiers, and how GPC or other browser signals are handled. These are suggested review topics, not findings that the supplied statutes require particular configurations or responses.

Data Quality

20 source(s), 9 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

• BUSINESS AND COMMERCE CODE CHAPTER 541. CONSUMER DATA PROTECTION — Texas Constitution and Statutes · Tier A (Primary authority)
• CONSUMER ALERT: Attorney General Ken Paxton Warns Texans of Scam Demand Letters Alleging Website Privacy Violations — Texas Office of the Attorney General · Tier A (Primary authority)
• Attorney General Ken Paxton Secures Major Agreement With LG to Protect Texans’ Privacy and Stop Data from Being Collected Without Their Knowledge — Office of the Attorney General · Tier A (Primary authority)
• CONSUMER ALERT: Attorney General Ken Paxton Warns Texans of Scam Demand Letters Alleging Website Privacy Violations — Texas Office of the Attorney General · Tier A (Primary authority)
• Ortiz et al. v. Foris Dax, Inc. — Order Dismissing Case, with Leave to Amend — U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, via Justia · Tier A (Primary authority)
• CIPA Reform Signed Into Law — WilmerHale · Tier C (Professional analysis)
• Website Tracking Lawsuit Against Retailer Dismissed for Lack of Standing: What California Ruling Means for Your Business — Fisher Phillips LLP · Tier B (Authoritative secondary)
• Texas AG Warns Businesses About Scam CIPA Demand Letters — The National Law Review · Tier C (Professional analysis)
• CONSUMER ALERT: Attorney General Ken Paxton Warns Texans of Scam Demand Letters Alleging Website Privacy Violations — Office of the Attorney General of Texas · Tier A (Primary authority)
• 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)
• Multi-Court Split on Website Tracking Federal Wiretapping Claims Creates Compliance Confusion: 6 Strategies to Avoid Risk — Fisher Phillips (published on JD Supra) · Tier A (Primary authority)
• Wyden Letter to Attorneys General on Global Privacy Control — Office of U.S. Senator Ron Wyden · Tier A (Primary authority)
• Data Protection & Privacy 2026 - USA | Global Practice Guides — Chambers and Partners · Tier C (Professional analysis)
• The US State Privacy Law Tracker for 2026: Twenty Laws, One Compliance Baseline — Consenteo · Tier C (Professional analysis)
• Multi-Court Split on Website Tracking Federal Wiretapping Claims Creates Compliance Confusion: 6 Strategies to Avoid Risk — Fisher Phillips (via JD Supra) · Tier A (Primary authority)
• Case 3:25-cv-08950-EMC Document 31 Filed 05/21/26 — United States District Court, N.D. Cal. (via govinfo) · Tier B (Authoritative secondary)

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