Google Lawsuit Filed in Arizona

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that it illegally collected location data from users without their permission. The filing says that Google tracked users even when the location tracking features had been manually disabled.

The Google lawsuit argues the tech giant kept location tracking running in the background for certain features. This was done for weather apps, web searches using the Google search engine and Chrome browser and more. Additionally, Arizona Attorney General argued that Google changed tracking defaults “without informing the user, much less seeking or obtaining consent.”

The only way to actually stop Google from tracking you is to dig further into the Android system settings and turned off the system-wide tracking, The Washington Post reports. “When consumers try to opt out of Google’s collection of location data, the company is continuing to find misleading ways to obtain information and use it for profit,” Brnovich told the newspaper. The state argued that Google made it too complicated to completely disable tracking, forcing users to dig into granular Android system settings.

This Google lawsuit is seeking potential fines of up to $10,000 per violation and wants Google to pay back Arizona profits earned through ads that monetized the data that was allegedly received illegally.

Google has found itself in similar controversies in the past over location tracking of Android users. It was fined $1.7B back in 2019 from the EU for its advertising practices and illegal data collection. YouTube, which is owned by Google, also settled with the FTC last year for violations of Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.