It’s finally happening. Freedom-loving Americans who value their privacy rights are finally taking a stand against one of the biggest names out there – Google. Attorney Generals that are representing Indiana, Texas, Washington D.C., and Washington all filed lawsuits on Monday against Google over their “deceptive” tracking of the locations of their users, including people who have made an effort to keep the platform from tracking them.
The Ag’s claim that the Big Tech Giant duped their consumers by using ‘dark patterns’ to access the location data of users. People with Android phones, Google Maps users, and even search engine users have been tracked and been a victim of unauthorized data collection, even when they had put privacy settings on their devices to prevent the tracking from occurring and their data from being collected and used by Google.
Karl Racine, the Attorney General from Washington D.C. is leading the charge after a long-winded 3-year investigation into the company. The investigation uncovered the fact that Google had been using conflicting and misleading claims since 2014, to trick users about the privacy protections they have while using google products.
Even users that had to change their account settings or device settings to keep google from tracking their location, we’re still being tracked and having their location information stored through Google Services, Wi-Fi data collection, and marketing partners. The suit also claims that Google misled users into believing their product wouldn’t work correctly without location services. Racine says Google is doing this so that it can surveil consumers and profit from the data they collect.
Google is, of course, denying all charges and saying that the claims are inaccurate. Google says they plan to defend themselves “vigorously” to make sure the record is set straight.
Attorney General from Indiana, Todd Rokita, says that Google is prioritizing their profits over their consumers, and over following the law. The attorney generals are hoping they’ll be able to find Google and force it to stop collecting location data from users who have decided to opt-out of the tracking.
Google says they have always had robust controls over location data, and have no intention of backing down on this case.
Author: Jake Blacker
