Aspen Dental’s proposed pixel-tracking settlement: up to about $18.47M over Meta and Google tracking (2025)
At a glance
- Brought by
- Private litigation
- Company
- Aspen Dental
- Sector
- Dental care
- Law
- State privacy and tracking claims
- Amount
- Up to ~$18.47M (proposed)
- Date
- Preliminary approval 2025
- Status
- Proposed, final approval not entered
Summary
A private class action alleged that the Meta Pixel and Google Analytics on Aspen Dental‘s appointment website shared patients’ information with Meta and Google. Aspen Dental agreed to a proposed settlement of up to about $18.47 million. It denies wrongdoing, and final approval has not been entered. Private plaintiffs brought this, and no government regulator was involved.
What happened
The case is Donnelly v. Aspen Dental Management, Inc., in the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Sangamon County, Illinois. Besides the Meta Pixel and Google Analytics, the lawsuit alleged that other tracking tools on the site did the same. The proposed settlement has two funds, $2,796,169.50 and up to $15,673,220, for people who made an appointment on aspendental.com from February 20, 2022 through January 1, 2025.
The mechanism
On a dental site, appointment activity can signal a person’s care and provider, which is the sensitivity the claim turns on. Under the settlement, Aspen Dental must use Freshpaint or a similar tool on aspendental.com for one year. This is the textbook version of the pattern: standard advertising pixels on a health booking flow.
Why it was preventable
Which pixels load on a booking page, and what they send when someone books, is exactly what a coverage scan plus payload inspection reports. Seeing what was leaving the page for Meta and Google is the finding that lets a team act before a filing.
In the settlement’s words
The settlement states that the defendant disclosed information about class members “to third parties, including, but not necessarily limited to, Meta Platforms, Inc. d/b/a Meta (‘Facebook’) and Google LLC (‘Google’) via tracking pixels … and other tracking technologies … installed on Defendant’s Website (www.aspendental.com).”
Timeline
- Feb 20, 2022 to Jan 1, 2025class period.
- 2025preliminary approval.
- Oct 6, 2025motion for final approval filed.
- Oct 20, 2025hearing taken off the calendar. No final approval order is on the docket.
Source
Settlement agreement, Donnelly v. Aspen Dental Management (Sangamon County, IL, No. 2025LA000036); official settlement site aspendentalpixelsettlement.com.
Questions
Was this a government fine?
No. Private plaintiffs brought this class action (Donnelly v. Aspen Dental Management), and no government regulator was involved. Aspen Dental agreed to a proposed settlement of up to about $18.47 million.
What did the pixels do?
The lawsuit alleged that the Meta Pixel, Google Analytics and other tracking tools on aspendental.com disclosed people’s information to Meta and Google. On a dental site, that activity can signal a person’s care and provider.
Is the settlement final?
No. It is a proposed settlement. A motion for final approval was filed in October 2025, but no final approval order appears on the court docket.
Related cases
Kaiser Permanente’s pixel settlement
Quantum Metric, X, Adobe, Bing, Google trackers
Penn Medicine’s $9.25M pixel settlement
Five trackers incl. TikTok; two-year conditional ad-tech limit
LifeStance’s $3M pixel settlement
Meta and Google tracking; mental-health data; 5-year limit on non-HIPAA-compliant pixels
See what your tags send before it becomes a case
DataTrue runs real journeys on your site in each consent state and reads what each tag sends, field by field. A tag sending what it should not shows up in a test.
- Every page, with coverage scans
- Scheduled runs, with alerts when a result changes
- Full journeys, like checkout and signup, in each consent state
- What each tag sent, field by field
- PII detection with test personas
- iOS and Android app testing
- Pre-publish testing for GTM and Adobe Tags
- REST API, plus Slack and Jira alerts
The full platform, every feature, free for 30 days.
