Google will pay a fine of $60 million penalty for tracking Android users against their will

Google will have to pay a penalty of $60 million in Australia for misleading customers about its data collection method between January 2017 and December 2018, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) filed a lawsuit against Google last year, claiming that the company continued monitoring Android and Pixel users' movements unless they said "No" or "Do Not Collect" to both "Location History" and "Web & App Activity."

This was thought to be deceptive by Justice Thomas Thawley since someone who checked "No" to just one of the options would continue to be tracked. According to Thawley, individuals would not have assumed that enabling "Web and App Activity" monitoring would also give Google the right to collect their location data. The problem may have reached almost 1.3 million people in Australia, according to the ACCC. Google claims that a small subset of users were affected.

Ideally, Google should have made it clear whether it would collect location data when the location history was set to off but the web and app activity was on. By default, the settings were changed. Today, a federal court was informed of Google's agreement to a fine of $60 million. In 2018, Google modified several parameters that formed the basis of the complaint. The court has also requested that Google take steps to assure compliance and educate its employees about Australian Consumer Law as part of its penalization plan.

Google assured the court that it would take care of the situation before its lawsuit was filed, and it has now adopted a new approach to location data management.

Google was sued by several US states earlier this year for deceptive location tracking methods. The complaint claimed that Google continues to monitor users even after they cancel their location history, and there is no way to prevent the firm from gathering and making money from location data. That information is used by Google to build comprehensive user profiles in order to attract advertisers.

Source: www.phonearena.com