The SNHU data sharing lawsuit is a proposed class action filed in December 2025 accusing Southern New Hampshire University of secretly transmitting students’ personal and academic information to Google and TikTok through tracking tools embedded in the mySNHU student portal. The case, Zeolla et al. v. Southern New Hampshire University, Case No. 1:25-cv-00541-TSM, was filed in the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire and brings claims under federal and state wiretapping statutes along with common law privacy and contract theories.
What Students Say SNHU Shared
Plaintiffs Tina Zeolla, a Massachusetts resident and current SNHU student, and Kirsten Kellogg filed the complaint on December 17, 2025. They allege that SNHU installed tracking pixels, third-party cookies, and browser fingerprinting tools from Google and TikTok on the mySNHU portal without disclosing them. The named tools include Google Analytics, Google AdSense, Google Tag Manager, and TikTok Pixel.
The mySNHU portal is the main place students go to manage coursework, check financial aid, view grades, and handle other academic tasks. According to the complaint, the tracking software automatically captured and sent the following categories of information to Google and TikTok:
- Full names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses
- Ethnicities and gender identities
- Career statuses and military service status
- First-generation college student status
- Financial aid application status
- Descriptions of enrolled courses and cumulative GPAs
- SNHU student ID numbers
The complaint describes the tracking tools as “invisible” and “imperceptible” to users and says the university never warned students or obtained their consent. It also alleges that SNHU’s public-facing website uses Facebook and Pinterest tracking tools in addition to the Google and TikTok tools found on the portal.
Who Could Be in the Class
The plaintiffs have asked the court to certify a class covering all students who have accessed the mySNHU portal. Any student who logged in to manage coursework, financial aid, or grades would fall within the proposed definition.
The potential size is large. SNHU’s own website reports over 200,000 online students and more than 3,000 on-campus students, and a February 2026 Washington Post report put the online figure at nearly 300,000.
Class certification has not been granted. Attorneys Sonjay Singh and Tyler Bean of Siri & Glimstad LLP were appointed interim co-lead class counsel, with Weintraum Law also representing the plaintiffs.
The Legal Claims and Possible Damages
The complaint brings six causes of action. Two rest on wiretapping statutes: the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (18 U.S.C. ยง 2511) and the New Hampshire Wiretap Act (RSA 570-A). The other four are common law and equitable claims for invasion of privacy, negligence, breach of implied contract, and unjust enrichment.
The wiretap theory matters because it opens the door to private lawsuits. Under the federal ECPA, a plaintiff can recover the greater of actual damages plus the violator’s profits, or statutory damages of at least $10,000, along with attorney fees. The New Hampshire statute authorizes actual, statutory, and punitive damages plus attorney fees for people whose communications are intercepted without authorization.
The complaint also references the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, but only as context for SNHU’s duties around student records. FERPA itself does not give students the right to sue. The 2002 Supreme Court decision in Gonzaga University v. Doe held that enforcement runs through the Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office, which can withhold federal funding from violators, rather than through private claims. That is why the plaintiffs built their case on wiretap law and common law instead.
The plaintiffs are asking for compensatory damages, attorney fees, and an injunction that would require SNHU to remove Google Analytics, TikTok Pixel, and other third-party tracking tools from the student portal.
What SNHU’s Privacy Policy Actually Says
One contested issue is what SNHU told students. The complaint alleges that SNHU “does not disclose its use of the Tracking Tools” and that students “could not, and did not, provide informed consent.”
SNHU’s published privacy policy, last updated in March 2025, reads differently. It names Google Analytics as a tracking technology used on SNHU’s sites and says tracking technologies may be set by third parties “like Google, Facebook or Amazon.” It describes cookies, web beacons, and pixel tags, and states that by using the university’s sites, users “expressly consent” to such collection. The policy does not explicitly name TikTok Pixel.
Two questions will drive this part of the fight: whether the public-facing privacy policy governs the mySNHU student portal specifically, and whether a general mention of Google Analytics covers the transmission of detailed academic records like GPAs and financial aid status. In an August 2025 ruling in the Northern District of California, a judge held that privacy policy inaccuracies about data sharing could themselves amount to an invasion of privacy, satisfying the “crime-tort” exception to the ECPA’s one-party consent defense. That reasoning, if adopted here, would weaken a consent-based defense built on the existing policy.
SNHU’s Response and Where the Case Stands
SNHU has acknowledged the lawsuit but denies no specifics publicly and has not conceded wrongdoing. Siobhan Lopez, the university’s director of media relations, said SNHU is “aware of the lawsuit and reviewing the allegations made in it” and that the university “takes data privacy seriously and remains committed to protecting the privacy of our students, faculty, and staff in accordance with applicable law.”
As of mid-2026, the case remains in its early stages before Magistrate Judge Talesha Saint-Marc. Class certification has not been granted. SNHU has not filed a motion to dismiss, and no settlement discussions have been reported.
How This Fits the Wider Tracking Pixel Wave
The SNHU case sits inside a sharp rise in tracking-technology litigation. ECPA-related tracking lawsuits saw a 235 percent increase in filings during 2025, with roughly 70 percent filed as class actions. Healthcare providers were early targets, including a case against Mass General Brigham over Meta Pixel use that produced an $18.4 million class settlement. Retailers, media companies, and tax preparers have followed.
Higher education is now part of that wave. In Goodman v. Hillsdale College, a federal judge in Michigan in late 2025 denied the college’s motion to dismiss claims that its use of Meta Pixel to transmit student video-viewing data and Facebook IDs violated the Video Privacy Protection Act, and the case settled shortly after. The SNHU complaint does not bring a VPPA claim, but the Hillsdale ruling signaled that courts are willing to apply privacy statutes to universities that embed third-party tracking on their platforms.
Students who used the mySNHU portal do not need to do anything right now to preserve their place in the proposed class. If the court certifies the class, notice will be sent to class members with instructions on how to participate or opt out.