Google Hit with Another Class Action Over Alleged Surreptitious Location History Tracking

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Google finds itself as the defendant in another proposed class action lawsuit filed by a consumer who claims the company surreptitiously tracks and stores time-stamped location data from mobile phone users who’ve turned off or opted out of location tracking. 

Filed in California, the 15-page complaint argues that while Google represents that its users are in control of the their location history and privacy preferences, the company, as revealed in an August 2018 Associated Press report, accesses and stores precise geolocation details regardless of whether a user has disabled his or her cell phone’s location history setting. Even when this setting is turned off, the case says, Google continues to track and store snapshots of where a user is when he or she opens, for instance, the company’s Maps app or receives a daily weather alert on an Android device. Even web searches that have nothing to do with location data, the suit continues, are spied by Google to obtain a user’s latitude and longitude.

The reason behind Google’s allegedly unauthorized location tracking, the lawsuit says, is how valuable location data is to advertising revenue.