VPPA Risk Checker

The Video Privacy Protection Act (18 U.S.C. § 2710) bars a video tape service provider from knowingly disclosing information that identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials. Courts have applied that 1988 definition to websites and apps that offer prerecorded video.

Disclosure is allowed with informed, written consent given in a form distinct and separate from any other legal or financial terms. The statute sets liquidated damages of $2,500 per person, and claims can be brought within two years.

On every page load, the Meta Pixel sends Meta the page address, the page title and a browser identifier. On a page that plays a video, the address and the title usually name the video. That one request is the core of most VPPA complaints filed against websites.

TikTok, LinkedIn, Google Ads and Snap pixels work the same way. What matters is which pages they run on, what they send from there, and whether the visitor agreed to it first.

It finds the pages of your site that play video, opens them in a clean browser, and records every request each advertising pixel makes: whether it received the page address, the video title or a video event, which identifier came with it, and whether that happened before or after the visitor answered your consent banner.

Each finding comes with the request itself, so your team or your counsel can see exactly what left the browser. It runs on the same scanner as our cookie and consent reports.

Publishers, course and membership sites, streaming and media companies, and any business whose site plays prerecorded video next to advertising pixels.

Counsel and agencies who need dated evidence of what a client's video pages send, whether to fix it before a demand letter arrives or to answer one.

The Supreme Court hears Salazar v. Paramount Global on October 14, 2026 and is expected to decide in 2027 who counts as a VPPA consumer. Either answer will shape how these claims are filed.

The fact pattern a court looks at is already on your pages today: which pixels run there and what they send. That part you can check and change before the ruling.

Whether a disclosure is a VPPA violation turns on legal questions a scan cannot answer: whether your business counts as a video tape service provider, and whether your visitors count as consumers. The Supreme Court agreed in January 2026 to decide the second question in Salazar v. Paramount Global and hears argument on October 14, 2026.

The checker reports risk indicators with evidence, not legal conclusions, and none of it is legal advice.