Google agreed to a $93 million settlement with the state of California on Thursday over its location-privacy practices.
The settlement follows a $391.5 million agreement made with 40 states in November 2022. Concluding an inquiry into how the corporation tracked customers’ movements.
The states’ investigation was spurred by a 2018 Associated Press piece that discovered that Google continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of it by removing a function called “location history.”
“Our study revealed that Google was telling its customers one thing — that it would no longer track their location if they opted out. While doing the opposite and tracking their movements for commercial advantage. That is intolerable, and we are holding Google accountable through today’s settlement,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
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As part of the settlement, in which Google admitted no wrongdoing, the company agreed to a number of restrictions, including increased transparency about location tracking, disclosure to users that their location information may be used for ad personalization, and display of additional information to users when location-related account settings are enabled.
“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this matter. Which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” the company said in a statement.
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