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Google has agreed to pay nearly $392 million in a settlement with 40 states over allegations that the company tracked people through their devices, even when location tracking had been turned off, a coalition of state prosecutors announced on Monday.
Authorities said Google broke consumer-protection laws by misleading users about when it secretly recorded their movements. It then offered the surreptitiously harvested data to advertisers, the source of nearly all of Google’s revenue.
„For years Google has prioritized profit over their users‘ privacy,“ said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who led the probe along with Nebraska. „They have been crafty and deceptive.“
Attorneys general say the payout is the largest-ever multistate privacy settlement.
As part of the deal, Google committed to a number of changes that will make the company’s location-tracking practices more clear, including showing users more information when they turn location tracking on or off and providing a detailed rundown of the location data Google routinely collects on a webpage consumers can access.
