**UPDATE**

The The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) is facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly using Google technology to covertly install tracking apps on over one million Android phones as part of the state government’s efforts to slow the spread of COVID-1 through contact tracing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/google-privacy-settlement

SUMMARY:

Google is coughing up $392 million in a lawsuit filed by 40 state AGs accusing the company of tracking users’ searches and web pages, even when users had location tracking shut off from 2014 to 2020.

Part of the suit alleged that Google also purposely misled users into believing the company was not collecting or using geolocation on them. Instead, The New York Times said,

“Through Google’s broad array of other services like search, maps and apps that connect to Wi-Fi and cellular phone towers, the company continued amassing and storing an intricate history of users’ movements.”

Google continued to track users who were no longer logged into their apps. While the award money goes to the straight to the states, Google has agreed to change the way it collects location data and how it informs and notifies users of what it’s doing and how to disable location tracking.

(If you believe this, I have some land in Siberia for sale…..)

For More:

%d bloggers like this: