Lawsuit against Google in the US

Author: Osman Cetinkaya
Date: 23.08.2018

Class action for unauthorized location storage

Lawsuit was filed against the world’s most popular search engine Google in the US. The reason for this is that Google allegedly stores permanently the location of its users without consent. Even when turning off the location history option, it is still recorded.

The lawsuit states that Google wants to “secretly monitor” mobile users and allows third parties to do so. Furthermore, the company is accused of misleading and invasion of privacy. Because of that, a class action is now sought.

The allegations arose from researches by the news agency AP. According to a report, several Google apps and websites will also save the location if it is actually disabled. After the report was published, Google changed the information about the location services, but not their approach.

One side points out that deactivating the location history does not necessarily mean that other location services will not receive data. Nevertheless, location data can be stored in other services. Furthermore, Google stated that, with the tracking service switched off, the location would not be saved.

Now the lawsuit was filed Friday night in San Francisco in federal court. Google has not commented on this so far. Even the representative of the plaintiff initially did not want to comment on the incident.