Google has agreed to pay $391.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of 40 US states for illegal location tracking of users.
Prosecutors’ investigation found that Android users they were deceived thinking that disabling “Location History” in your devices’ settings would disable location tracking, while another account setting, turned on by default and called “Web & App Activity,” allowed the company to collect , store and use location data and personal identification of consumers.
Location tracking, illegal and for 8 years
According to the indictment, Google had been misleading users about location tracking practices since at least 2014, violating state consumer protection laws.
the deal it is an acknowledgment of responsibilities and undesirable practicesgenerally against the right to privacy and also for abuse of a dominant position, for which Google has been accused and convicted in the past and still has lawsuits pending in several world regions, although in this case the Internet giant says that these are practices that he no longer carries out and that were based “on outdated product policies that we changed years ago”declared a spokesman.
The prosecutors who sued Google have been tougher: “When consumers make the decision not to share location data from their devices, they should be able to trust that a company will stop tracking their every move«Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in a statement. “This agreement makes it clear that companies must be transparent in how they track customers and comply with state and federal privacy laws.”.
In addition to the nearly $400 million (small change when you consider that Google took in $111 billion from advertising in the first half of this year alone), the deal requires Google to introduce more user-friendly account controls and limit the use and storage of some types of location data.
Google will also need to be more transparent with its users regarding its location data collection and tracking practices, and will need to display additional information when related settings are changed and display detailed information about what data it collects and how it is used.
