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Amazon sued for posting actress’s birthday

Oct 17, 2011, 7:51 PM | Updated: Oct 18, 2011, 7:01 am

Sometimes a woman doesn’t like the world knowing her age, especially when she’s an actress concerned about losing jobs to younger women in Hollywood.

An actress is suing Amazon.com for revealing her age on one of their websites and refusing to remove the reference when asked.

Amazon owns the Internet movie database IMDb. An actress, only known as “Jane Doe” from Texas in the court documents filed in Seattle, is suing IMDb’s parent company for more than $1 million for revealing her real age.

In the complaint filed last week, the actress claims “credit-card interception is the only way the company could have learned her real age.” The actress says that Amazon’s conduct amounts to fraud and breach of contract, in violation of Washington laws. She believes they swiped her personal information after she used her credit card to purchase a professional subscription to IMDb which she thought would give her an advantage in auditioning for jobs.

The woman also believes she’s lost income and jobs because of IMDb’s posting of her age. Her attorney says 40-year-old actresses are not in demand in the movie business.

Neither Amazon nor IMDb have comment on the claims. This isn’t the first time the companies have dealt with this kind of complaint. Los Angeles actress Eriko Tamuro, who was once a Britney Spears-like teen idol in Tokyo, settled a lawsuit with IMDb in 2007 after the site posted her real name and birth date.

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Amazon sued for posting actress’s birthday