Google agreed to pay $391.5 million to 40 states to settle a four-year investigation into the company’s location tracking practices. A coalition of state attorneys general said that the settlement was the biggest internet privacy settlement by U.S. states.
The investigation focused on what the attorneys’ general said was misleading and deceptive tactics surrounding users’ location data. “Consumers thought they had turned off their location tracking features on Google, but the company continued to secretly track their movements and use that information for advertisers,” said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, one of the leaders of the investigation, in a statement.
The settlement also calls for Google to make its location tracking disclosures more transparent beginning in 2023. Specifically, those measures include forbidding Google from hiding key information about location tracking and requiring the company to provide users with more details about the type of information it collects and how it uses that data.
Google said it has already addressed and corrected some of the practices that were outlined in the settlement. In a blog post, the company said that it launched auto-delete controls and turned them on by default for all new users. This function gives users the ability to automatically delete data on a rolling basis and only keep 3, 18 or 36 months’ worth of data at a time. Plus, it introduced new settings like “incognito mode” on Google maps that prevents searches or places users navigate to from being saved and it also introduced more transparency tools, such as Your Data in Maps and Search, that lets users access their key location settings from Google’s core products.
The company also said that it is working on new initiatives in response to the settlement that will be released in the coming months. For example, it plans to revamp its user information hubs to better explain how location data improves its services and also highlight location settings so users can make informed decisions. In addition, it is going to provide a new control that makes it easier for users to turn off their location history, web and app activity settings. And finally, Google said it is updating account set-up so users will have more detailed explanations of what web and app activity is and what information it includes.
The investigation into Google’s use of location data started after a 2018 Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store users location data even when they have used privacy settings that say it will prevent Google from doing so. The AP investigation was confirmed by computer science researchers at Princeton.
Data privacy isn’t just a concern with web companies but also an issue for mobile operators. Earlier this year the FCC asked the leadership of all the U.S. mobile service providers to provide the agency with details about their companies’ mobile data sharing policies and procedures. Specifically, the FCC asked the mobile operators about their processes for sharing subscriber geolocation data with law enforcement and other third parties’ data sharing agreements. The agency also wanted to know how consumers are notified when their geolocation information is shared with third parties.