AG Ferguson lawsuit claims Google secretly tracks users’ location – KIRO 7 News Seattle

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OLYMPIA, Washington – Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson will file a lawsuit against Google on Monday alleging that Google continued to track users even after turning off location tracking settings.

Ferguson’s lawsuit claims that Google is misleading users into believing they have control over how their location data is collected and used.

“In reality, consumers cannot effectively prevent Google from collecting, storing and profiting from their location data,” says a press release from the AG’s office.

Even when users turn off location history in their account settings, Google continues to collect location data, which gives the company the ability to target ads to users based on that data, the lawsuit claims. The lawsuit claims that Google’s practices, including hard-to-find location settings, misleading descriptions of location settings, and repeated reminders to enable location settings, make it nearly impossible for users to stop the company from collecting location data. .

The AG’s office said location data is critical to Google’s advertising business, so Google has a major stake in continuing to access it.

Google made nearly $ 150 billion from advertising in 2020.

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