In the latest volley against Alphabet’s Google, a lawsuit has been filed alleging the Big Tech giant recorded customers’ locations after users tried to turn off the company’s tracking on their web browsers and smartphones.
The complaint, filed Monday (Jan. 24) in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, asserts that Google’s location tracking system is constructed in a way that makes it impossible for users to opt out, and Google misled users about how privacy settings could protect their data within apps and at the device level on Android.
In addition, the 43-page suit contended Google relies on deceptive dark pattern design to force users into making choices counter to their own interests.
“These practices include privacy-intrusive default location settings, hard-to-find location settings, misleading descriptions of location settings, repeated nudging to enable location settings, and incomplete disclosures of Google’s location data collection and processing,” according to the complaint.
Since location data is central to Google’s profitable advertising business, the company has a financial incentive to dissuade users from withholding access to that data, the suit stated.
“…Google has employed and continues to employ a number of deceptive and unfair practices to obtain users’ ‘consent’ to be tracked and to make it nearly impossible for users to stop,” according to the complaint.
Similar lawsuits are being filed in Indiana, Texas and Washington state courts, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.
Google disputed the claims, according to WSJ.
“The attorneys general are bringing a case based on inaccurate claims and outdated assertions about our settings,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said, per WSJ. “We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We will vigorously defend ourselves and set the record straight.”
This latest suit comes less than two weeks after the Austrian Data Protection Authority ruled that the continuous use of Google Analytics violates Europe’s privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a decision that could have a significant impact on U.S. cloud services.
Read more: Google Analytics Violates Privacy Law
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