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November ’22 marks a significant milestone in consumers privacy protection for the US, as the multi billion dollars company has come under the law.
On Monday, the Oregon’s Department of Justice announced that it along with 39 other US states will receive a combined $391.7 million in return for dismissing the privacy litigation against Google, which was made in 2018.
The privacy allegation on Google was that “[it] misled its users into thinking they had turned off location tracking in their account settings, when, in fact, Google continued to collect their location information.”, stated the press release.
As the verdict is announced, Google has agreed to significantly improve its location tracking disclosures and user controls starting in 2023.
Google is required to become explicitly transparent in its data collection procedure, states the settlement. This means, from now onwards, Google must:
- Inform users of what it means for their data privacy when turning location services ‘on’ or ‘off’;
- Clearly state when Google services require ‘unavoidable location tracking’ instead of keeping this hidden from users; and
- Give detailed information to users about the types of location data Google collects and how it’s used, on a dedicated webpage.
The case was opened in 2018, when the attorney generals from the US Department of Justice, majorly AG of Oregon and Nebraska, started investigating the case after an independent press article rebutted Google’s illegal tracking of location information.
The Associated Press- AP, an independent global news organization, debunked Google’s illegal tracking of user’s personally identifiable location data for advertising purposes.
The investigation’s credibility weighs on the fact that it involved computer scientists from Princeton university who discerned Google’s attempt of tracking people’s whereabouts even though users opted out of Location Tracking.
In other words, Maps and other Google services on Android and iPhones; such as search browser and Play store applications, have been tracking its users with a separate ‘Tracking Location’ control that was turned ‘on’ by default.
What’s disruptive is that Google has been misleading its users in this manner since 2014, found the investigation.
As some examples, Maps stored a user’s current location right at the moment of opening the application; the weather update services always calculated users’ location to accuracy; and some applications such as ‘Chocolate Chip Cookies’, where location tracking is completely irrelevant, measured user’s longitude and latitude to accurately mark their place of presence. All this data was saved on user’s google account.
How does it matter?
Minute-by-minute tracking of user’s transit is against their basic privacy rights and might create drastic consequences for them. As for the case of Google, Police in North Carolina had warrant the tech giant to share location information of all devices in the proximity of a crime scene, highlighted in AP’s investigation.
“Consumer privacy is one of my office’s top priorities.” remarked AG Rosenblum during the proceedings.
And for that, the consumer protection (CP) task force is working on yet another remarkable legislation that plans to further the control users have on their online privacy. If this bill, slated for 2023’s Legislative Session, is successfully passed, it’ll bound companies to provide users with: information about what data the company is sharing; to whom and where their data was disclosed; delete option, or making corrections to their data.
While Google is under Radar for long now, to make things better the search giant recently rolled out an innovative privacy enabled advertising system called Privacy Sandbox. Learn how Google plans to enable advertising without user data leaving their devices, thus giving zero control to the company or advertisers on the data.
