Tina Wolfson
Biometric Privacy · Digital Tracking · Consumer Class Actions
“In the age of corporate surveillance, this historic settlement recognizes that data is the new oil.
What the Product Keeps
Tina Wolfson’s privacy cases trace what happens after a photograph, meeting, or location setting becomes data—and turn hidden product behavior into payments, disclosures, deletion rules, and user controls.
A Snapshot Becomes a Dataset
Most digital privacy cases begin with an action that feels ordinary: saving a photograph, opening a video meeting, turning off a location setting. In Tina Wolfson’s cases, the legal problem starts with what the product does next. Plaintiffs alleged that Google Photos generated face templates from images, that Zoom’s third-party software and security representations exposed information in ways users had not expected, and that Google stored location data even while Location History was disabled. The sequence—an ordinary choice followed by an unseen technical process—organizes a practice built around making the system legible enough for a court, a class, and ultimately the product designer to act on it.
Wolfson is a principal and founding member of Ahdoot & Wolfson, a national class-action firm focused on antitrust and consumer protection. She graduated cum laude from Columbia University in 1991 and cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1994. She is admitted in California, New York, and the District of Columbia and in federal courts across the country. Her matters move between privacy statutes, platform-security claims, and antitrust cases, but the recurring question is concrete: what information did the system create, retain, or disclose after the user made a choice?
The Face in the Photograph
Rivera v. Google concerned Google Photos’ Face Grouping feature. Illinois residents alleged that the service created and stored face templates from photographs without the disclosures and written consent required by the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act. The settlement agreement identified Wolfson among court-appointed class counsel and established a $100 million non-reversionary fund for the class. It also required notices explaining that Face Grouping was enabled and that Google created face templates or models, affirmative consent when Google Photos was activated, instructions for disabling the feature and deleting templates, and a published retention policy tied to user deletion choices.
The settlement translated the technical conversion at the center of the case into specific product rules. Plaintiffs connected faces in ordinary photographs to templates stored by Google and then to BIPA’s notice, consent, and retention requirements. The resulting terms addressed where notice would appear, what a user had to affirm, which actions would trigger deletion, how face data would be protected, and a prohibition on selling, leasing, or trading face templates outside Google.
When the Meeting Became Infrastructure
The Zoom privacy litigation arose as work, school, medicine, and family life moved onto video calls. Plaintiffs alleged that Zoom shared user data through third-party software, represented that meetings had end-to-end encryption when they did not, and failed to prevent unauthorized disruptions known as “Zoombombing.” The federal court appointed Wolfson and Mark Molumphy interim co-lead counsel. They led the case through discovery, expert analysis, and repeated mediation before the court granted final approval on April 21, 2022.
The final settlement created an $85 million non-reversionary fund, made individual payments available to paid subscribers and other users who filed valid claims, and required more than a dozen practice changes aimed at meeting security, privacy disclosures, and consumer-data protection. Those changes remained in force for periods of one to three years. The result joined cash relief for eligible users to changes in the platform that had become a daily communications system for roughly 150 million settlement-class members.
What the Glasses Send
In In re Meta AI Glasses Litigation, consumers allege that Meta’s AI-enabled glasses transmitted audio, video, and other data to Meta’s servers despite representations that captured media remained under the user’s control. They further allege that some footage was made available to human reviewers or used in connection with training Meta’s artificial-intelligence systems. Wolfson represents plaintiffs in the consolidated Northern District of California proceeding.
On July 19, 2026, Judge Edward Chen appointed Wolfson, Thomas Loeser, and Ryan Clarkson interim co-lead counsel. The litigation expanded in September to include proposed claims for bystanders who allege they were recorded without consenting to the capture or downstream use of their images. The case remains pending.
The Map a Life Leaves Behind
In Google Location History Litigation, the plaintiffs alleged that Google tracked and stored mobile-device location information even when users had disabled the Location History setting. The court appointed Wolfson and Michael Sobol lead class counsel for a settlement class estimated at 247.7 million people. The final settlement established a $62 million non-reversionary fund and required Google to explain how Location History and Web & App Activity collect location information, show users how to disable those settings, and maintain an automatic-deletion policy of no more than eighteen months for users who opted into them.
No settlement money was paid directly to class members. After approved deductions, the balance went to twenty-one court-approved nonprofit organizations for work addressing internet and data privacy, with periodic reports required on how the funds were used. The district court approved that structure in May 2024 after finding direct distribution infeasible for a class of that size. On August 26, 2026, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the final-approval order. Wolfson’s antitrust work follows the data question into the advertising markets built around it: a 2022 federal order appointed her and Dena Sharp interim co-lead counsel for an advertiser class in Google Digital Advertising Antitrust Litigation, and her docket also includes Klein v. Meta Platforms.
Judgment in Service of the Courts
Wolfson has served as a lawyer representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference and as an elected member of its executive committee. She has also served on the Merit Selection Panel for the United States District Court for the Central District of California, which evaluates candidates for appointment as magistrate judges. These roles place the same questions of judgment and institutional administration that shape her litigation work into service of the federal courts.
Across Rivera, Zoom, and Location History, the form of monetary relief changed with the record: direct class payments in the first two matters and court-approved nonprofit distributions in the third. Each resolution also imposed product changes. Face Grouping received new notice, consent, retention, deletion, and security terms; Zoom adopted meeting-security and privacy measures; Google agreed to clearer location-setting notices and automatic deletion. Wolfson’s work repeatedly turns hidden system behavior into terms that a court can approve and a company must implement.