Google Sued by Washington DC AG over “Deceptive Location Tracking Practices That Invade Users’ Privacy”

The Washington DC Attorney General’s office filed a lawsuit against Google, which alleges the tech giant violated state and federal law with its “deceptive location tracking practices that invade users’ privacy.” The suit claims Google engages in deceptive marketing by claiming it doesn’t track or place advertisements on user devices. While this is true, according to the complaint, Location History shows ads were served after users visited certain websites while browsing their mobile device.

The “google lawsuit 2020” is a lawsuit that was filed against Google by Washington DC AG. The lawsuit alleges that Google’s location tracking practices are deceptive and invade users’ privacy.

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The Attorney General of Washington, DC, Karl A. Racine, is suing Google for alleged location monitoring activities that he claims violate his state’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act.

Google is accused of “deceiving and manipulating customers to get access to their location data, including making it almost hard for users to block their position from being monitored,” according to a news statement issued by Racine’s office today. While the search giant seems to have an option that enables users to opt out quickly and easily, Racine claims that tracking continues regardless of what they choose, with data being gathered and retained for commercial reasons.

“Google misled users into believing that modifying their account and device settings would safeguard their privacy and enable them to manage what personal data the corporation might access,” AG Racine stated.

“The fact is that, despite Google’s claims, it continues to aggressively monitor consumers and profit from their personal information. The brazen misrepresentations made by Google are a clear breach of customer privacy. I’m honored to join this bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in holding Google responsible for their dishonesty. We will hold Google responsible via this action, and in the process, we will educate customers about how their personal data is gathered, kept, and sold, especially sensitive data about their physical location. Consumers, not Google, will control how their data is used or not utilized as a consequence of our joint effort.”

Racine’s probe was spurred by a 2018 Associated Press piece that showed Google had been monitoring its users’ movements even after they had turned off their Location History feature. Although Google maintains that once Location History is off, locations are no longer saved, the Associated Press reports that this isn’t the case, since certain Google applications continue to save time-stamped location data.

However, stored location data may be manually erased from Google’s servers through myactivity.google.com, which is a “laborious” procedure.

OAG is the source of this information.