After over two years of litigation led by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich for “deceiving consumers” by tracking their location on smartphones without their knowledge and then selling the information, tech giant Google has settled, agreeing to pay the state $85 million.
Brnovich is the first attorney general in the country to sue Google over the practice, telling The Arizona Sun Times, “Google knew more about where you were going and who you hung out with, more than your travel agent or spouse,” he said.
That, he said, is what prompted him in part to file the complaint was the shocking extent of how much personal information was obtained. He found out about the practice after a news article revealed that Google was tracking users through its app preloaded on Android smartphones even after they’d disabled their “Location History” setting.
Brnovich told The Sun Times, “If someone hid a tracking device on your car without your permission, you would be understandably outraged, and that would capture just a fraction of the information that’s being collected off your phone.”
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times
