Google will pay Washington state $39.9 million to resolve a lawsuit accusing the Alphabet unit of misleading consumers about its location tracking practices, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said on Thursday.
The settlement resolves claims that Google deceived people
into believing they controlled how the search and advertising company collected
and used their personal data.
In reality, the state said Google was able to collect and
profit from that data even if consumers disabled its tracking technology on
their smartphones and computers, invading consumers' privacy.
A consent decree filed on Wednesday in King County Superior
Court requires Google to be more transparent about its tracking practices, and
provide a more detailed "Location Technologies" webpage describing
them.
"Today's resolution holds one of the most powerful
corporations accountable for its unethical and unlawful tactics," Ferguson
said in a statement.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, denied
wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.
In November, Google agreed to pay $391.5 million to resolve
similar allegations by 40 US states.
Some states including Washington chose to sue Google on
their own about its tracking practices. Arizona reached an $85 million settlement with Google last October in one of
those cases.
In response to the Washington settlement, Google referred to
its earlier statement on the multistate accord, where it said it had addressed
various concerns raised by regulators, including "outdated product
policies that we changed years ago." © Reuters
0 comments:
Post a Comment