Amazon sued for telling age of actress

SEATTLE – An anonymous actress claims in a million-dollar federal lawsuit that her offers for roles dropped sharply after the popular Internet Movie Database published damaging personal information: her age.

The actress, identified as a Texas resident of Asian descent, claims she looks a lot younger than she is, and so she had always been careful about keeping her given name and birthdate confidential. As an unknown, she used an Americanized stage name in 2003 when she first listed herself on imdb.com, a listing which she said brought her several jobs.

But in 2008, she tried to advance her career by signing up for a subscription service with the website called IMDb Pro. The service is designed for entertainment industry professionals.

She provided credit card information – and her real name – when she bought the service, according to the lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court against Seattle-based IMDb and its parent company, Amazon .com. IMDb used that information to uncover her date of birth, which also isn’t disclosed, and added it to her profile on the website, “revealing to the public that Plaintiff is many years older than she looks,” the suit says.

She claims she never consented to having the personal information she provided used for anything but the commercial transaction. IMDb refused to remove her age from her profile when asked, the suit said.