Nuked Arizona attorney general Mark brnovich has filed a lawsuit against Google over claims the company illegally tracked Android users’ location without their consent.
Suit argues Google kept location tracking running in the background for certain features, like weather and for web searches using its search engine and Chrome browser. Only when a user dug further into the Android system settings and turned off broader system-level tracking did Google stop surreptitiously siphoning location data.
Google has responded to privacy concerns over location tracking of Android users. The company has responded with various stopgap measures like making it easier to auto-delete your location data. But its efforts to improve privacy protections remain complex and confusing to average users.
The post says Arizona’s anti-fraud laws also might subject Google to $ 10,000 per fine violations. The post is asking a court force Google to pay back profits it may have earned from monetizing this data through ads served to Arizona residents.
‘we have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We look forward to setting the record straight,’ Google said in a statement given to the verge.
I wanted Google to get the message that Arizona has a state consumer fraud act. They may be the most innovative company in the world, but that does n’t mean they’re above the law,’ he said.
Google and its YouTube subsidiary are facing a number of regulatory and legal quagmires. Following antitrust and privacy enforcement in the EU that resulted in multi-billion fines against Google over the last decade.
Us politicians and regulators have begun engaging in a broad and coordinated effort across the Department of justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and state legislators. These are rules Silicon Valley has largely flouted over the last couple of decades as lawmakers failed to keep up with the pace of technological change.
Youtube settled with the FTC last year for violations of children’s online privacy protection act (COPPA). Google is currently under investigation by all 50 state attorneys general and the subject of a broader antitrust probe led by the Justice Department.
