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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.
