OAKLAND, California (AP) — Search big Google agreed to a $93 million settlement with the state of California on Thursday over its location-privacy practices.
The settlement follows a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states, reached in November 2022, to resolve an investigation into how the corporate tracked customers’ areas.
The states’ investigation was sparked by a 2018 Related Press story, which discovered that Google continued to trace individuals’s location knowledge even after they opted out of such monitoring by disabling a characteristic the corporate known as “location historical past.”
“Our investigation revealed that Google was telling its customers one factor — that it might now not monitor their location as soon as they opted out — however doing the other and persevering with to trace its customers’ actions for its personal business achieve. That’s unacceptable, and we’re holding Google accountable with right this moment’s settlement,” Legal professional Common Rob Bonta stated in a press release.
As a part of the settlement, wherein Google admitted no wrongdoing, the corporate additionally agreed to a lot of restrictions, together with offering extra transparency about location monitoring, disclosing to customers that their location data could also be used for advert personalization, and displaying further data to customers when enabling location-related account settings.
“In line with enhancements we’ve made in recent times, we’ve settled this matter, which was based mostly on outdated product insurance policies that we modified years in the past,” Google stated in a press release.