Google to pay $585 million for misleading users about location tracking
Google has come under fire for misleading users over location tracking. Photo: Shutterstock
Google has agreed to pay 40 US states almost $US392 million ($585 million) after being caught tracking users’ locations – even when users turned location-tracking off.
US authorities have labelled the payout as the biggest multi-state privacy settlement in history.
“For years Google has prioritised profit over their users’ privacy,” said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who led the probe along with Nebraska.
“They have been crafty and deceptive.”
The states’ investigation was sparked by a 2018 Associated Press article, which found Google apps continued to automatically store time-stamped location data after users on Android and Apple devices turned ‘Location History’ function off.
Despite telling users pausing the Location History function would stop location tracking, Google still stored location data when users opened its Maps app, accessed weather updates on Android phones, and used Google search to look up things that had nothing to do with location, like ‘chocolate chip cookies’ or ‘kids science kits’.
Location tracking issues addressed
Google said it addressed the unauthorised location tracking years ago.
“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” said company spokesperson Jose Castaneda in a statement.
Following the news of the settlement, Mario McGriff, Google director of product, Geo, and David Monsees, Google product lead, Search, said the company has introduced more transparency and tools to help users manage their data and minimise the data collected from them.
This includes auto-delete controls, which are turned on by default for all new users, giving them the ability to automatically delete data on a rolling basis and only keep 3, 18 or 36 months worth of data at a time.
Google Maps’ ‘incognito’ mode also prevents users’ searches or navigation history from being saved to their accounts.
“As well as a financial settlement, we will be making updates in the coming months to provide even greater controls and transparency over location data,” Mr McGriff and Mr Monsees said.
These updates will include a new control that will allow users to easily turn off their Location History and ‘Web & App Activity’ settings and delete their past data.
Google fined millions for misleading Australians
Google’s settlement with US authorities comes after the company was ordered to pay $60 million by the Australian Federal Court for misleading users about the collection and use of their location data on Android phones between January 2017 and December 2018.
The Court found Google had breached the Australian Consumer Law by telling some Android users that the Location History function was the only Google account setting that affected whether Google collected, kept and used personal location data.
However, the Web & App Activity function also enabled Google to collect, store and use personally identifiable location data when it was turned on, and that setting was turned on by default.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said the penalty sends a strong message to other businesses not to mislead consumers about the collection and use of their data.
