A California consumer has sued Erie and Elephant on the same day, claiming both insurers used the Meta Pixel to track website visitors without their knowledge.
Eric Yardley filed both class action complaints in the US District Court for the Southern District of California on May 20, 2026. One names Erie Insurance Group. The other names Elephant Insurance Services, LLC. Same plaintiff, same lawyers, same theory.
At the center of both suits is the Meta Pixel, a piece of tracking code companies embed on their websites. Yardley alleges Erie and Elephant placed the pixel on erieinsurance.com and elephant.com, and that it recorded, decoded, and captured visitors' "routing, addressing, or signaling information" while passing the same data to Meta Platforms, Inc.
That conduct, the complaints argue, makes the pixel a "pen register" and a "trap and trace device" under California Penal Code § 638.51, part of the California Invasion of Privacy Act. Section 638.50(b) defines a pen register as "a device or process that records or decodes dialing, routing, addressing, or signaling information transmitted by an instrument or facility from which a wire or electronic communication is transmitted, but not the contents of a communication." Section 638.50(c) defines a trap and trace device as one that captures incoming signaling information "reasonably likely to identify the source of a wire or electronic communication, but not the contents of a communication." Using either without a court order is barred.
The technical story in both filings is the same. When a visitor landed on the insurer's site, the pixel allegedly installed an "_fbp" cookie that built a unique browser ID. When that visitor later logged into Facebook, Meta is alleged to have matched the "_fbp" cookie to a "c_user" cookie tied to their account, linking the website visit to a named user. Yardley says he downloaded his own "off-Facebook activity" report from Facebook, which he says showed unique identifiers, timestamps, and tags like "Search" or "Page View" or "Content" attached to each insurer's site.
The complaints quote Meta's own documentation. The pixel, Meta says, allows it "to match your website visitors to their respective Facebook User accounts" and that "[o]nce matched, we can tally their actions in the Facebook Ads Manager so you can use the data to analyze your website's conversion flows and optimize your ad campaigns." Meta also instructs businesses to "install" the pixel by adding "pixel code to the website header." Both defendants, Yardley alleges, chose to do that.
The complaints argue this is "not just performing routine analytics, gathering IP addresses or using functional cookies." The proposed class in each case covers "[a]ll natural persons in California who used Defendant's website and whose dialing, routing, addressing, or signaling information was recorded, decoded, or captured by Defendant or a third party."
Each complaint pleads aggregate claims above $5 million, the threshold for federal class action jurisdiction. Both ask for statutory damages, punitive damages, prejudgment interest, injunctive relief, attorneys' fees, and a jury trial. Neither names a per-violation figure.
Erie is described in its complaint as a Pennsylvania corporation based in Pennsylvania. Elephant is described as a Delaware company based in Virginia. Both are alleged to have directed conduct at California consumers through their websites.
The allegations have not been tested in court. Neither defendant has filed a response, and no judge has ruled.
