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 basic over its location monitoring practices. The settlement outlines that Google misled its customers into pondering they’d turned off location monitoring at the same time as the corporate continued to gather their location info. The investigation, which marks the most important lawyer general-led shopper privateness settlement ever, was co-led by Oregon and Washington.

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

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

“Per enhancements we’ve made lately, now we have settled this investigation which was primarily based on outdated product insurance policies that we modified years in the past,” a spokesperson for Google informed TechCrunch in an e mail.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 12 months. The settlement requires Google to point out extra info to customers each 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 submit, Google outlined it is going to “present a brand new management that permits customers to simply flip off their Location Historical past and Net & App Exercise settings and delete their previous information in a single easy stream.” The corporate additionally plans so as to add extra disclosures to its Exercise controls and Information & Privateness pages.

Alongside these modifications, Google goes to create a complete info hub that highlights key location settings. As well as, Google plans to present customers who’re establishing new accounts a extra detailed rationalization of what Net & App Exercise is and what info it consists of. The corporate mentioned it is going to proceed deleting location historical past information for customers who haven’t lately contributed new location historical past information to their account.

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

The attorneys basic 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 shoppers 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 big deceived customers by accumulating location information with out their consent. Google can also be at present going through a lawsuit from Washington, DC, Texas, Washington state and Indiana. The lawsuit alleges that Google deceived customers by accumulating their location information even after they believed that sort of monitoring was disabled.