Privacy Walmart faces lawsuit over alleged secret voiceprint collection in Illinois August 7, 2026 Share By SC Staff (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) As reported by Biometric Update, a proposed class action lawsuit has been filed against Walmart in Illinois, alleging the retail giant secretly converted customers' telephone calls into biometric voiceprints using AI without obtaining the required written consent under state law. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, claims Walmart records calls to its stores, extracts vocal characteristics, and creates mathematical templates to identify callers. Plaintiffs allege that an automated message stating calls may be recorded for business purposes, including fraud prevention, is insufficient as it does not disclose the creation and storage of voiceprints, their retention period, or potential third-party sharing. The complaint asserts that Walmart's AI system records audio, isolates speaker characteristics, and analyzes physical and behavioral identifiers like pitch, cadence, and tone to build unique voice templates. It also alleges the system monitors speech for emotional tracking. Walmart's privacy notice does list voiceprints among potentially collected biometric information, but the plaintiffs argue this does not confirm all recorded calls are used for voiceprint creation. The suit seeks damages and an injunction for alleged violations of Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which mandates written notice and consent before collecting biometric data and prohibits profiting from or disclosing such information without consent. Source: Biometric Update SC Staff Related Privacy UK data watchdog criticizes Metropolitan Police for data handling failures SC Staff August 6, 2026 The UK's data protection regulator criticized the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) for significant data handling failures, including sharing a stalking victim's new contact details with her abuser and a separate incident exposing the email addresses of 18 individuals connected to Parliament. Ransomware Beacon CRM confirms cyberattack exposed UK charity data SC Staff August 6, 2026 Beacon CRM confirmed it was the target of a cyberattack that resulted in the exposure of data belonging to a significant number of UK charities. Identity Brazil’s health system data exposed online SC Staff August 6, 2026 As outlined in HackRead, over 102,000 private records from Brazil’s health surveillance system were left accessible online without any security measures, exposing sensitive personal and government information. Get daily email updates SC Media's daily must-read of the most current and pressing daily news Business Email By clicking the Subscribe button below, you agree to SC Media Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Subscribe Related Terms Anonymization Authenticity Biometrics Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) Digest Authentication Digital Certificate Discretionary Access Control (DAC) Geolocation Identity Theft Inference Attack You can skip this ad in 5 seconds