Google paid penalty of $391.5 million for tracking Android users location

Google paid penalty of $391.5 million for the privacy lawsuit filed by US attorneys general from 40 states.

As per the settlement, the US attorneys general have discovered that the search giant misled Android users and have tracked their locations even when they have disabled the GPS tracking, and this has been happening since 2014.

Google paid penalty for tracking user location without consent

As per the investigation and the final report, though users did turned off their location tracking, Google used the ‘Web & App activity’ to track the user location and history, which allowed them to collect, store and process the end-user data without their consent.

Also, Google was asked to introduce more user-friendly account management options and has been restricted the user of personal data without proper consents.

Google should become more transparent with the android users regarding location tracking and how users data will be processed.

“The company’s online reach enables it to target consumers without the consumer’s knowledge or permission. However, the transparency requirements of this settlement will ensure that Google not only makes users aware of how their location data is being used, but also how to change their account settings if they wish to disable location-related account settings, delete the data collected and set data retention limits.” mentioned the Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.

Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) fined Google $60 million for misleading and collecting location history of Australian Android users between Jan 2017 – Dec 2018, almost two years.

Later, Google took remedies and fixed it’s location tracking procedures and stopped misleading users for the same.

Additionally, Google was again fined a penalty of $170 million by the France National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) on the freedom of consent of internet users by making it challenging to disable website tracking cookies with the option kept hidden behind several navigation.

Google paid penalty of more than 5 billion in penalties for user data exploitation

Moreover, that’s not all, Google was also fined for the following data manipulation and user personal data exploitation.

• Google paid penalty of $2.72 billion for abusing its dominant market position to manipulate search results in June 2017.
• Google paid penalty of  $1.7 billion for anti-competitive practices in digital advertising in March 2019.
• Google paid penalty of €220 million for supporting services to the disadvantage of competitors in June 2021.
• Google paid penalty of $11.3 million for extensive and aggressive data collection in Nov 2021.

This lawsuit was first filed by four US attorneys in January 2021 for tracking users location without their consent and now Google has paid the settlement for the class action lawsuit.

If you don’t want Google to track your location or its history, don’t just turn off GPS, but also the web & app activity settings.

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