In a December 23-filed complaint in the federal court in San Jose, California, applications for the Apple iPhone and iPad transmit the personal information of the users to advertising networks without the customers’ consent.

The lawsuit against Apple has been filed on behalf of Jonathan Lalo of Los Angeles County; and seeks class action status for Apple customers who have downloaded an app on their iPhone or iPad between December 1, 2008, and last week. Lalo is represented by Scott A. Kamber and Avi Kreitenberg of KamberLaw LLC in New York.

Claiming that the transmission of personal information is a breach of federal computer fraud as well as privacy laws, the complaint noted that Apple’s iPhones and iPads are encoded with an identifying device - a Unique Device Identifier (UDID), which cannot be blocked by users.

As per the complaint, the UDID enables advertising networks to keep tabs of the apps that the users download, as well as find out the frequency of use of the apps and the period of their use.

The complaint further elaborates that “some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views.”

The apps identified in the lawsuit include Pandora, Paper Toss, the Weather Channel and Dictionary. com; which have been named as defendants in the complaint, along with Apple.