Google to pay $391.5 million in location-tracking settlement with 40 states • TechCrunch

Google has agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 state attorneys common over its location monitoring practices. The settlement outlines that Google misled its customers into considering that they had turned off location monitoring at the same time as the corporate continued to gather their location data. The investigation, which marks the biggest legal professional general-led shopper privateness settlement ever, was co-led by Oregon and Washington.

“For years Google has prioritized revenue over their customers’ privateness,” stated Oregon Lawyer Common Ellen Rosenblum in a information launch. “They’ve been artful and misleading. Shoppers thought that they had turned off their location monitoring options on Google, however the firm continued to secretly document their actions and use that data for advertisers.”

Google stated in an announcement that it has already addressed and corrected a number of the location monitoring practices detailed within the settlement.

“In keeping with enhancements we’ve made lately, now we have settled this investigation which was based mostly on outdated product insurance policies that we modified years in the past,” a spokesperson for Google informed TechCrunch in an e mail.

As a part of the settlement, Google has agreed to enhance its location monitoring disclosures and consumer controls beginning subsequent yr. The settlement requires Google to point out extra data to customers every time they flip a location-related account setting on or off. Key details about location monitoring should additionally not be hidden going ahead.

In a weblog publish, Google outlined it would “present a brand new management that enables customers to simply flip off their Location Historical past and Net & App Exercise settings and delete their previous knowledge in a single easy circulate.” The corporate additionally plans so as to add extra disclosures to its Exercise controls and Information & Privateness pages.

Alongside these adjustments, Google goes to create a complete data hub that highlights key location settings. As well as, Google plans to offer customers who’re organising new accounts a extra detailed clarification of what Net & App Exercise is and what data it contains. The corporate stated it would proceed deleting location historical past knowledge for customers who haven’t lately contributed new location historical past knowledge to their account.

“Till now we have complete privateness legal guidelines, firms will proceed to compile massive quantities of our private knowledge for advertising and marketing functions with few controls,” Rosenblum stated within the information launch.

The attorneys common opened the Google investigation after a 2018 Related Press report discovered that the corporate recorded customers’ actions even after they explicitly informed it to not. The investigation discovered that Google violated state shopper safety legal guidelines by deceptive customers about its location monitoring practices since at the least 2014.

Final month, Google agreed to pay the state of Arizona $85 million to settle a separate lawsuit that alleged the search large deceived customers by amassing location knowledge with out their consent. Google can also be at the moment dealing with a lawsuit from Washington, DC, Texas, Washington state and Indiana. The lawsuit alleges that Google deceived customers by amassing their location knowledge even after they believed that form of monitoring was disabled.