A judge in California has decided that Google must face a class-action lawsuit over its collection of user data.
The lawsuit was initially filed in June 2020 and claims that Google tracks and collects consumer browsing history, among other activities, even when Chrome’s privacy-based “Incognito” mode is in use.
Specifically, the complaint alleged that when a user visits a webpage or opens an app that uses Google’s services, allegedly used by over 70% of all online publishers, that user’s personal information is sent to the company’s servers in California. The data includes the user’s IP address, what the user is viewing, what the user last viewed, and details about the user’s hardware.
“Google takes the data regardless of whether the user actually clicks on a Google-supported advertisement — or even knows of its existence. This means that billions of times a day, Google causes computers around the world to report the real-time internet communications of hundreds of millions of people to Google,” read the complaint.
The claim was filed in the District Court of Northern California, and the injured parties are seeking at least $5 billion in damages.
Google sought to have the case thrown out because it claims the company’s privacy policies are clear. The company’s filing states “that ‘Incognito’ does not mean ‘invisible,’ and that the user’s activity during that session may be visible to websites they visit, and any third-party analytics or ads services the visited websites use.”
US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California refused to throw out the suit and is forcing Google to face this issue head-on in Court.
“The court concludes that Google did not notify users that Google engages in the alleged data collection while the user is in private browsing mode,” wrote Judge Koh in her ruling.
In an email to The Verge, Google spokesperson José Castañeda said that the company disputes the lawsuit’s claims “and we will defend ourselves vigorously against them.”
The ruling comes as Google faces increased legal scrutiny over its privacy choices. Last week, the Arizona Attorney General filed a complaint against Google alleging that the company deceptively tracked users based on various sources of location data.
The Arizona lawsuit accused Google of designing its Android operating system so that even when users turned off their location services and location records, such as map, weather, and search data, they were still collected.
On a positive note for Google’s handling of its users’ privacy concerns, the company recently announced that it plans to stop using or investing in tracking technologies that uniquely identify web users’ presence from site to site as they move across the internet.
The phasing out of cookies is a major move for Google as the world’s biggest digital advertising company. Google also committed to not building alternate identifiers to track users’ internet movements, nor will the company use any alternate identifiers in its products.
