Ringleader Digital May Have Ceased Operations

Clickz reported that Ringleader Digital, a firm focused on behavioral advertising for mobile devices, may have ceased operations and closed without notice:

"Its staff is no longer answering or returning phone calls and emails... A doorman in the lobby at the address listed on Ringleader's corporate website - 286 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY – said the company's offices have been locked since the beginning of the month and no one has entered the premises since..."

Ringleader's technology was the focus of concern by several privacy advocates. The company faced several class-action lawsuits for allegedly performing tracking and data collection of mobile devices without providing notice to users nor gaining users' consent. The two major class-action lawsuits were Hillman et al and Aughenbaugh et al filed in November 2010.

The Hillman complaint included as codefendants several well-known companies: Ringleader Digital, Accuweather, CNN, ESPN, Fox News Network, Go2 Media, Merriam-Webster, Travel Channel, and the Whitepages. ESPN and Fox News were not listed as defendants in the Aughenbaugh complaint. The Hillman complaint alleged that Ringleader's mobile tracking violated the mobile device manufacturers’ agreements, and included the tracking of minor children.

According to ClickZ, Ringleader had agreed to settle out of court one of the lawsuits.

Comments

[Tom C]

Nobody should hire a crap like Bob Walczak who displayed no leadership skills while being a CEO in a company I worked before. Nobody should hire crap people like Rick Landsman, Peter Laining, these are a bunch of cheaters who abused or stole millions of dollars of funding from honest and naive investors for years.

[RLD]

Tom Chen above was actually fired very shortly after hired as a DBA at Ringleader and was employed for such a short time he has no experience with what actually occurred at Ringleader. Basically sour grapes from an incompetent database resource, but given his over the top remarks, anyone could probably guess that.