Australia’s consumer watchdog has sued Google and its local subsidiary, accusing the Alphabet Inc company of misleading users in the way that it gets permission to track their location.
At issue is Google’s Location History setting on Android mobile devices.
The way that Google represents it to users would lead them to believe that turning the feature off would be enough to stop the company from storing their location data, but users must switch off “Web & App Activity” tracking to truly block storage of location data, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in its lawsuit.
“We allege that Google misled consumers by staying silent about the fact that another setting also had to be switched off,” commission Chair Rod Sims said in the statement announcing the action.
A Google spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Google said it would defend the matter, with a spokerperson adding that the company is reviewing the allegations and would continue to engage with the commission.
Google’s privacy controls have drawn criticism in the past and the company has taken steps to centralize them, but options remain fragmented across multiple settings.
Google’s smartphone services store users’ locations even when privacy settings are adjusted to shut these features off, according to a report by the Associated Press that was confirmed by Princeton University researchers.
Google at the time said that Location History is entirely opt-in, but – even when it is disabled — the company continues to use location to improve user experience in search or navigation, for instance.
The commission’s additional allegation is that Google misled consumers into thinking that “the only way they could prevent Google from collecting, keeping and using their location data was to stop using certain Google services, including Google Search and Google Maps.”
That hid the fact that disabling location tracking could in truth “be achieved by switching off both ‘Location History’ and ‘Web & App Activity,’” the commission added.
The commission seeks penalties and the setup of a compliance program for future activities, among other measures.
The watchdog has the power to levy penalties as high as 10 percent of revenue, Sims told reporters.
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