Arizona Sues Google Over Illegal Tracking of Android Users
Arizona has filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that it illegally collected location data from users without their permission. The filing from the Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich says that Google tracked users even when the location tracking features had been manually disabled.
The suit argues Google kept location tracking running in the background for certain features. This was done for weather apps, web searches using the Google search engine and Chrome browser and more. Additionally, Arizona Attorney General argued that Google changed tracking defaults “without informing the user, much less seeking or obtaining consent.”
The only way to actually stop Google from tracking you is to dig further into the Android system settings and turned off the system-wide tracking, The Washington Post reports. “When consumers try to opt out of Google’s collection of location data, the company is continuing to find misleading ways to obtain information and use it for profit,” Brnovich told the newspaper.
This Google lawsuit is seeking potential fines of up to $10,000 per violation and wants Google to pay back Arizona profits earned through ads that monetized the data that was allegedly received illegally.
Google was also fined $1.7B back in 2019 from the EU for its advertising practices and illegal data collection.
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Good to know. I’m not a fan of Google, since I find them to be intrusive, dishonest and downright evil. Nice to see action to push back a bit.