Florida <a href="https://www.myfloridalegal.com/newsrelease/attorney-general-james-uthmeier-takes-legal-action-against-netflix-deceiving-florida” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Attorney General James Uthmeier filed suit against Netflix on September 9, 2026, in St. Johns County Circuit Court, alleging the company secretly tracking users , collecting behavioral data from subscribers, including data linked to children’s profiles, and used it to power an advertising business it launched in November 2022. The complaint spans 66 pages and covers a wide range of alleged data practices tied to accounts Netflix publicly described as child-friendly.
What Florida Is Alleging
The complaint details a broad scope of behavioral data collection that Florida says fed directly into Netflix’s advertising infrastructure.
According to the filing, Netflix reportedly tracked what users watched, searched, paused, rewound, skipped, or abandoned, along with device and location information. Florida alleges that data supported the company’s ad business despite public messaging that Kids Profiles offered a child-friendly, ad-free environment.
The complaint, as quoted by NBC Miami, states that “behind the scenes, Netflix was accumulating years of consumer data and building the behavioral-surveillance infrastructure that it would ultimately deploy for its advertising business in November 2022.” The state also alleges Netflix sold or shared sensitive personal data tied to known minors without legally required consent, and failed to provide the notice the law mandates when selling sensitive data. Advocates focused on child safety have raised similar concerns about how platforms handle minors’ data across the industry.
The Legal Claims and Stakes
Florida is invoking two state laws and seeking civil penalties, injunctive relief, and deletion of behavioral data tied to children’s profiles.
The complaint cites the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and the Florida Digital Bill of Rights. Uthmeier stated the scale of what the state is pursuing plainly: “We will be seeking billions of damages,”
Netflix has not publicly responded to the allegations in available reporting. The claims have not been proven in court.
Why This Case Reaches Further Than Florida
State-level scrutiny of how platforms design and disclose child-facing products has been intensifying, and this lawsuit reflects that broader trend.
Privacy regulators and lawmakers across multiple states have increasingly targeted the gap between how tech and media companies market child-facing products and how those products actually behave at the data layer. This lawsuit fits that pattern directly, echoing concerns raised by investigators who built a surveillance app to expose how behavioral data collection can be weaponized without users’ knowledge.
If Florida prevails, the implications extend well beyond Netflix’s legal bills. Every ad-supported streaming platform with a kids’ mode would face pressure to clarify its data disclosures. It would also need to make its child-profile design match its marketing claims.
The allegations remain unproven, and courts will determine what Netflix actually did and whether it violated Florida law. What the case does establish now is a question with real consumer stakes: when a streaming platform tells you a kids’ profile is safer, do you know what “safer” means inside its actual data policy?
“Ad-free experience” and “data-free experience” are not the same thing. This case is partly about whether the distinction between the two was made clear to consumers at the time of enrollment. How it resolves could reshape how streaming platforms design and disclose kids-oriented features across the industry.
