A lawsuit has brought attention to Google’s ability to track its users even when they activate the privacy settings that will direct the company not to do so.
A complainant told a US court that Google is illegally tracking the movements of millions of iPhone and Android phone users. The filed complaint said Google falsely assures its users they won’t be tracked if they turn the “Location History” feature on their phones to “off” but instead of complying, Google violates users’ privacy by monitoring and storing their movements.
The case is Patacsil v Google Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 18-05062.
“Google represented that a user ‘can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.’ This simply was not true,” the complaint filed in San Francisco federal court said.
The plaintiff, Napoleon Patacsil of San Diego, is seeking class-action status on behalf of U.S. users of Android phones and Apple iPhones who turned the tracking feature off.
Reuters reported the alleged tracking by the unit of Mountain View, California-based Alphabet Inc was described in an Aug. 13 Associated Press article, which said it was confirmed by computer science researchers at Princeton University.
Patacsil said Google illegally tracked him on his Android phone and later on his iPhone, where he had downloaded some Google apps. According to him, Google’s “principal goal” was to “surreptitiously monitor” phone users and let third parties do the same.
Reuters reported that the help section of Google’s website now says that turning Location History off “does not affect other location services” in phones, and that some location data may be saved through other services, such as Search and Maps.
