San Francisco (The Hawk): In response to claims that it tracked users' whereabouts without their permission in the US, Google will pay a landmark $391.5 million settlement to 40 states in the country.
In order to resolve accusations that the tech giant improperly tracked the locations of Android users, Google last month paid the state of Arizona $85 million.
Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum of Oregon and Attorney General Doug Peterson of Nebraska led a recent settlement with Google on its location tracking policies, which is the largest attorney general-led consumer privacy settlement ever.
Oregon will get $14,800,563 as compensation for its leadership in the bipartisan investigation and settlement.
According to Attorney General Rosenblum, "Google has put profit over their consumers' privacy for years."
"They have been cunning and dishonest. Customers believed they had disabled Google's location tracking tools, but the corporation continued to track them covertly and exploit that data for marketers "He declared late on Monday in a statement.
According to the terms of the settlement, Google deceived its customers into believing they had disabled location tracking in their account settings while, in reality, Google kept track of their locations.
Along with the multimillion dollar settlement, Google also committed to dramatically enhance its location tracking disclosures and user controls beginning in 2023 as part of the agreements with the AGs.
The Oregon Department of Justice claims that a significant component of Google's digital advertising business is location data. Google creates thorough user profiles and targets adverts using the behavioural and personal information it gathers.
Location information is perhaps some of the most delicate and important personal data that Google gathers. Even a small bit of location information can be utilised to infer personal information and reveal a person's identify and routines.
The state attorneys general determined that Google has been deceiving customers about its location monitoring methods since at least 2014.
With regard to how much consumers might restrict Google's location monitoring by changing their account and device settings, Google specifically misled its users.
Google claimed in a blog post that the case was founded on "outdated product policies" that the business had already updated.
A new toggle will allow users to "in one simple move" turn off and delete your location history as well as your site and app activity, according to Google, which also said it will start offering more "specific" information about the data it collects tracking during the account registration process.
(Inputs from Agencies)