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A lawsuit filed in federal court accuses Google of invading people's privacy by tracking the whereabouts of smartphones users despite "location history" settings being turned off.
The suit filed Friday by a California man seeks unspecified damages along with class-action status to represent all US iPhone or Android smartphone users who turned off location history in order not to have their movements logged by Google.
"Google expressly represented to users of its operating system and apps that the activation of certain settings will prevent the tracking of users' geolocations," the lawsuit read. "This representation was false."
The suit accuses Google of violating privacy law, and cites a news report last week confirmed by university researchers.
Related: Google Caught Tracking Android User Location Data
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:31PM (1 child)
That's the thing, increasingly there isn't even an option to not be spied upon that doesn't involve moving to a shack in the middle of the woods like the Unibomber.
Trying to claim that there was consent when in most cases it's literally impossible to find out what the data is being used for is rather rich. It's certainly not informed consent and it's not necessarily even uninformed consent when there are few alternatives.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Wednesday August 22 2018, @04:42AM
And in court there will be some sort of tortured logic excusing what was done that amounts to 'because the campaign donation check was large and cleared'. I'd guess it'll be something like 'everyone knew they were lying and tracking you anyway, just like facebook so it doesn't matter if they wrote they wouldn't somewhere.'