Google has lost another privacy battle, agreeing to pay Washington state $39.9 million “over misleading location tracking practices.”
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed the suit, saying that Google misled customers regarding how much control they had over location tracking. Even when customers opted out of location tracking, Google maintained the ability to track them and profit from their location data.
Washington had joined a multistate suit effort against the company but had filed separately, giving it the option of settling with Google independently. The AG’s office estimates the settlement was more than twice what it would have received as part of the multistate settlement.
“Google denied Washington consumers the ability to choose whether the company could track their sensitive location data, deceived them about their privacy options and profited from that conduct,” Ferguson said. “Today’s resolution holds one of the most powerful corporations accountable for its unethical and unlawful tactics.”
As part of the agreement with Google, the company will be required to implement various measures to be more transparent about how it collects and uses location data. Such measures include:
- Show additional information to users whenever they enable a location-related account setting by describing the sources, purposes and retention of relevant location data;
- Ensure users see information about location tracking; and
- Give users detailed information at an enhanced “Location Technologies” webpage about the types of location data Google collects and how it will use that data.
The agreement is a big win for consumers and will hopefully serve as a warning to companies not to mislead their customers about what data they collect and how they use it.
