Google has agreed to a A$584.21 million settlement with 40 state attorneys general over its location tracking practices.
The largest consumer privacy settlement in history focused on Google’s practice of continuing to collect location information even after users had turned off location tracking.
“For years Google has prioritised profit over their users’ privacy,” said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum in a news release.
“They have been crafty and deceptive. Consumers thought they had turned off their location tracking features on Google, but the company continued to secretly record their movements and use that information for advertisers.”
Google said it has already amended the location tracking practices outlined in the settlement.
“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” a spokesperson for Google said.
In a cheery blog post, Google writes:
“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.”
This includes “creating a single, comprehensive information hub that highlights key location settings to help people make informed choices about their data” as well as a simple new control to allow users to delete their past data “in one simple flow.”
This settlement follows a separate A$126.8 million settlement with the state of Arizona on location data collection.
Google currently facing similar lawsuits from Washington, DC, Texas, Washington state and Indiana.
