Google To Pay $85 Million To Settle Location Tracking Case in Arizona - CPO Magazine

A user fraud suit brought by the Arizona lawyer general’s bureau successful May 2020 volition beryllium settled by Google for $85 million, successful what volition beryllium 1 of the largest payments of its benignant successful authorities history. Arizona accused Google of violating the state’s Consumer Fraud Act by continuing to cod idiosyncratic accusation for determination tracking adjacent aft they had opted out, racking up monolithic profits successful the process.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich says that the authorities opened the probe successful 2018 aft an AP study recovered that definite Google apps proceed to log and store idiosyncratic determination past adjacent aft they person opted out. The study sparked calls for enactment from a fig of members of Congress.

Google determination tracking colony volition supply large boost to Arizona authorities coffers

The AP investigation that sparked each of this stemmed from probe conducted astatine Princeton that recovered Google apps specified arsenic Maps, the upwind app and the hunt barroom would pinpoint idiosyncratic locations with varying degrees of accuracy (down to the quadrate ft successful the astir invasive cases) and log them adjacent if the idiosyncratic had disabled “Location History.” The contented was discovered erstwhile researchers noticed that Google was prompting them to reappraisal retail locations they had visited adjacent erstwhile they had Location History wholly disabled connected their devices.

At the clip of the report, Google’s ineligible statement was that users should cognize that turning disconnected “Location History” did not really disable “device-level Location Services” successful immoderate apps. Google besides claimed that disabling “Web & App Activity” would halt this added determination tracking, but researchers soon recovered that this mounting does not enactment an extremity to each of its postulation of determination data. This accusation is incorporated into Google’s targeted advertizing system, which made the institution a small implicit $209 cardinal successful 2021.

In summation to providing a large boost to Arizona’s wide fund, the colony magnitude is 1 of the largest Google has paid for privacy-related issues. The institution precocious paid a $100 cardinal colony successful Illinois for alleged violations of that state’s unsocial biometric privateness laws successful its tracking of pictures uploaded to its photograph app. While these are important penalties, they are acold from an existential menace to Google’s estimated yearly full gross of astir $257 billion. Some ineligible observers judge Google has simply settled into paying fines of this benignant arsenic a outgo of doing concern alternatively than seeing them arsenic an impetus to alteration problematic privateness behaviors.

The institution has been fixed a rougher clip successful the EU successful caller years, paying a full of astir €8.2 cardinal since 2017 for assorted violations of antitrust rules and privateness laws. Google has faced a caller question of lawsuits successful 2022, however, arsenic respective states person coordinated to instrumentality it to tribunal implicit the usage of “dark patterns” to coerce users into consenting to determination tracking. Some states, specified arsenic California, person specifically outlawed the usage of acheronian patterns owed to the mode successful which they are utilized by large tech platforms. A radical of lawmakers tried to prohibition them astatine the national level via the Deceptive Experiences to Online Users Reduction (DETOUR) Act, which was introduced successful 2020 but ne'er voted on. The measure has precocious been re-introduced but faces pugnacious circumstances owed to an upcoming midterm predetermination followed soon by breaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Chain of determination tracking penalties haunts Google, but volition they marque a difference?

At this constituent Google has a agelong past of surreptitious determination tracking that is hard to disable (sometimes impossible), dating backmost at slightest arsenic acold arsenic 2017 erstwhile it was recovered to beryllium collecting information from adjacent compartment towers; adjacent removing the phone’s SIM paper would supply nary extortion from this truthful agelong arsenic the telephone was connected to the internet. Google has since ended that practice, but lone aft beardown media-driven backlash.

Google has small impetus to alteration its practices if these periodic fines bash not importantly wound into its monolithic advertizing profits, however, and truthful acold they are truly not making overmuch of a dent. The company’s superior maneuver for sliding determination tracking nether the radar appears to beryllium making circumstantial exceptions for circumstantial apps that tin beryllium disabled by the user, but lone if the idiosyncratic goes into that circumstantial app and combs done its settings. Android users were archetypal lulled into a mendacious consciousness of information with the Location History setting, and past the Web & App Activity setting, believing that those covered each of the privateness bases. But determination are exceptions that impact determination tracking, specified arsenic a circumstantial “save location” mounting recovered successful Google Photos that has to beryllium manually disabled wrong the app. Studies person besides recovered telemetry settings that are intolerable to crook disconnected connected the phones of circumstantial manufacturers, and this accusation is managing to upwind its mode backmost to targeted advertizing programs.