Google has agreed to pay $93 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. state of California over allegations that the corporate’s location-privacy practices misled customers and violated shopper safety legal guidelines.
“Our investigation revealed that Google was telling its customers one factor – that it might not observe their location as soon as they opted out – however doing the other and persevering with to trace its customers’ actions for its personal business acquire,” California Legal professional Common Rob Bonta stated.
The lawsuit is in response to disclosures that the corporate continued to trace customers’ places regardless of stating on the contrary that such info wouldn’t be saved if the “Location Historical past” setting was disabled.
The criticism filed by California alleged that Google collected location knowledge via different sources and that it deceived customers about their means to decide out of customized ads focused to their location.
With Google making over $220 billion in income in 2022 from promoting alone, the event is the newest in a sequence of economic settlements made by the Mountain View-based firm to resolve a number of lawsuits filed by completely different states within the U.S.
Final November, it agreed to pay $391.5 million to settle comparable complaints by 40 U.S. states. Then in January 2023, it agreed to pay a complete of $29.5 million to settle two completely different lawsuits introduced by Indiana and Washington, D.C.
Subsequently, in Might 2023, the corporate settled with Washington state for $39.9 million for a similar causes. It is at the moment going through a location monitoring lawsuit within the state of Texas.
Id is the New Endpoint: Mastering SaaS Safety within the Trendy Age
Dive deep into the way forward for SaaS safety with Maor Bin, CEO of Adaptive Protect. Uncover why id is the brand new endpoint. Safe your spot now.
The tech large, which has not admitted to any wrongdoing, has maintained that they’re based mostly on “outdated product insurance policies that we modified years in the past.” It additionally agreed to offer better controls and transparency to customers over location knowledge.
The event comes two weeks after Austrian privateness non-profit NOYB (brief for None of Your Enterprise) filed three complaints towards Google-owned Fitbit for forcing new customers of its app to consent to delicate knowledge transfers exterior the European Union that won’t have the identical degree of safety because the bloc.
“Opposite to authorized necessities, customers aren’t even supplied with a chance to withdraw their consent,” it additional added. “As a substitute, they must fully delete their account to cease unlawful processing.”
