Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Netflix for spying on Texans, including children, and collecting their personal data without consent.
The complaint, filed under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, accuses Netflix of running a hidden surveillance program that records billions of behavioral events from its users.
According to Paxton’s office, every click, pause, and preference on the platform feeds a profile that Netflix then sells.
What the Netflix Lawsuit Claims
The state alleges Netflix logs viewing habits, device details, household networks, and app usage across both adult and kids’ profiles.
That data gets shared with commercial data brokers and ad tech firms, who stitch it together with information from other platforms to build detailed consumer profiles.
Paxton stated the following in his official press release:
“Netflix has built a surveillance program designed to illegally collect and profit from Texans’ personal data without their consent, and my office will do everything in our power to stop it. Netflix is not the ad-free and kid-friendly platform it claims to be. Instead, it has misled consumers while exploiting their private data to make billions. I will continue to work to protect Texas families from deceptive practices by Big Tech companies and ensure that corporations are held accountable under Texas law.”
We’ve watched this same pattern play out with Roku selling kids’ data and Google tracking children through apps. The streaming giants keep getting caught, pay a fine, and move on.
Hide Your Digital Fingerprint
Autoplay and the Addiction Angle
The petition also targets Netflix’s autoplay feature, which the state says is engineered to keep users, especially kids, watching for hours.
Texas wants the court to force Netflix to disable autoplay by default on children’s profiles, halt the unlawful data collection, and pay civil penalties.
Final Thoughts from Troy
The press release calls Netflix ‘a logging company that records and monetizes billions of behavioral events, and occasionally streams movies.’ That line alone tells you where this case is headed and why using a VPN with Netflix is a good place to start.
If Texas wins, every streaming service quietly selling viewer data should be nervous. The bigger question is whether a fine will actually change Netflix’s behavior or just become a line item.
For more details on this story, refer to the article from the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the official court petition (PDF).
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