Your Website Has the Potential to Get You Sued. Here’s Why

You probably spent a lot of money building a professional website. It may look great, convert visitors, and could even be packed with helpful tracking tools that allow your marketing team to monitor what’s working.

But there’s a hidden problem: those same tracking tools have the potential to get your company sued.

Here’s how it feels from the visitor’s side: they land on a website, spend a few minutes browsing, and then move on to the next website. Though they’ve moved on, the products they viewed may start targeting them with ads across the internet. That “following” experience is created by pixels and scripts from Meta, Google, TikTok, and session replay tools running on your website.

What most business owners don’t realize is that these common marketing tools are now triggering a fast-growing wave of lawsuits under California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA).

From 2024 to 2026, lawsuits related to pixels and tracking have increased 650% (Eckert Seamans*)

What’s really happening?

The lawsuits claim that your website is illegally “wiretapping” visitors. Plaintiffs argue that the moment your site collects browsing behavior, IP addresses, or device information and shares the data’ with third parties; you are violating the law because you haven’t first obtained clear consent.

These aren’t traditional data breaches. No hacker broke in. No data was stolen.

CIPA is a 1967 wiretap law originally written for telephone calls that is now being used by lawyers against modern websites. One aggressive plaintiff has already sent out thousands of demand letters. And because any California visitor can trigger a claim, this risk applies to nearly every company with an online presence.

Why this should concern you as a business owner?

Pixel / tracking lawsuits have surged rapidly from 2024 to 2026, growing from a small wave into a large, ongoing litigation storm
- Estimated volume: ~150–250 cases (2024) → ~800–1,500+ (2025) → ~1,000–2,000+ active cases (2026)
- What’s driving it: scalable mass filings using old privacy laws (like CIPA & VPPA) plus high settlement pressure, keeping the pipeline full
You can face $5,000 in statutory damages per violation
Insurance carriers are reacting strongly: Many are excluding this coverage entirely or limiting it to low sublimits ($50K–$100K)
You may have “wrongful collection” or “Privacy” coverage, but with a PIXEL exclusion in the small print of your cyber insurance policy

Even in today’s soft cyber insurance market, underwriters are getting much stricter about website tracking practices.

What are leaders doing now to get ahead?

You don’t need to be a technical expert to get in front of this. Take these six simple steps today:

Open your own website in an incognito browser. Does a clear consent pop-up appear before non-essential trackers start running?
Run a free tracker scan at https://themarkup.org/blacklight: it will show you every pixel and script that phone home from your site.
Ask your web or marketing team: When does data collection actually begin? How is consent captured? Can visitors easily opt out?
Make sure your legal team has reviewed your full tracking setup and privacy policy.
If you are collecting data, you may even have to compile the collected data to give to consumers. You should be prepared to respond to “Right to Know” requests (within 45 days) showing what data was collected about that specific user.
Use a plugin for WordPress or Shopify to help you comply with CA and other state regulations.

These quick actions can prevent costly issues and provide you with a compelling story to share with your leadership team.

So what’s the bottom line?

This “wrongful collection” risk is real, growing, and very different from normal cyber threats. The good news? There are still solid insurance options available; but only if you can demonstrate that you’re handling website tracking responsibly.

Need help staying on top of your cyber policy?

If you’d like us to review your current cyber policy and check for coverage gaps (no cost or obligation), we’re here to help.

*Estimates based on aggregated legal filings and industry reporting (Eckert Seamans, ABA, Baker Donelson, Reuters) suggest pixel and tracking-related lawsuits have grown from a few hundred cases in 2024 to well over 1,000+ active cases by 2026