Washington: Google on Monday agreed to settle a landmark privacy case with 40 US states over allegations that the search engine giant misled users that location tracking had been turned off on their devices.
It is the largest multi-state privacy settlement by state authorities in US history and includes a binding commitment to better disclosures by Google, it said in a statement.
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Plotkin said in a statement that a digital platform like Google cannot claim to provide users with privacy controls and then ignore those controls to collect and sell data to advertisers against the users’ wishes. does
The rare joint lawsuit by 40 states comes amid legislative gridlock in Washington over federal authorities’ failure to crack down on big tech.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers disagree on what national online privacy laws should look like, with tech companies lobbying hard to limit their potential impact.
Since 2018, US tech giants have faced tougher rules in Europe, with Google, Amazon and others slapped with hefty fines for privacy breaches.
The US case began after a 2018 article by The Associated Press revealed that Google tracked users even after they had opted out of the practice.
Other states involved include Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
Specifically, the error in their case was evidence that users continued to be tracked when they disabled the location history option on their phones because the tracking continued through a separate web and app activity setting.
In a statement, Google said the allegations are based on product features that are no longer up-to-date.
“With the improvements we’ve made in recent years, we’ve settled this investigation that was based on old product policies that we changed years ago,” the company said.
Under the settlement, Google will provide more detailed information about tracking activities.
