March 29, 2024

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Google fined millions for misleading Australians with location settings – IT Pro – News

Google has been fined A$60 million for misleading Australian citizens with its location data settings. The federal court ruled in April last year that Google had broken the law, but the fine has only been announced now.

According to the Australian consumer watchdog ACCC, Google misled citizens with location history settings, web and app activities from early 2017 to late 2018. The agency states that by using these two settings, Google made it appear that Google collected and used location data only when location history was turned on. In fact, this also happens if the Web & App Activity setting is enabled.

So the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched a lawsuit against Google in October 2019, in April last year The Australian Federal Court ruled in favor of an oversight body. Under the decision, Google and the ACCC had to come up with the next steps together. This resulted in a fine of sixty million Australian dollars, which was transferred to 41.5 million euros. The The Federal Court agreed to this fineWhich means that the US company will now have to pay the fine.

ACCC board member Gina Kass Gottlieb has spoken of a “significant” fine and says companies and platforms should not mislead consumers about how their data is collected and used. The watchdog estimates that 1.3 million Australian Google accounts have viewed the breach settings. In December 2018, Google tweaked the settings, so consumers were not misled, according to the watchdog.

Location data settings used by Google between April and December 2018. With these settings, Google will save the user’s location, even if this is not expressly stated.

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