Google’s face off with four different states, Android users and Google puts halt to the lawsuit

Android users and Google have finally agreed to put a halt to the lawsuit over privacy violations done by the tech giant for now and have decided to resolve the matter through negotiation.

California’s District Judge, Edward Davila who is leading this mediation has put a halt to the dispute last Tuesday and has ordered the two parties to submit a status report by the 13th of May.

Texas, Columbia, Indiana, and Washington—the four states have taken Google to court alleging the tech giant for practicing deceptive methods of collecting its user's data and using it to invade their privacy. The case originated back in 2018 when a resident from San Diego accused Google of keeping track of his whereabouts. During an investigation, it was revealed that Google is tracking its user’s coordinates through their smartphones and without their permission.

According to the reports, the tech giant managed to store the whereabouts of its users even though the users decided not to give access to Google about their current location. It was further disclosed that Google deliberately made it difficult for the subscriber to locate the settings that would disable the location tracking.

Google’s shady practices affected almost billions Android users while iOS victims numbered millions. While it seems that Google is not going to leave its bad habit of keeping track of its users nowhere soon, Washington’s AG, Ferguson claims that Google has deceived its users by making them believe that they had the authority to control the limit of the data that they wanted Google to have. However, Google went on to store all the data and made a profit out of it by running ads related to the user’s information.

According to the statement given by the Washing’s AG; Google has different unfair methods to somehow obtain its user’s permission to allow Google to track them.

The states seek to make the tech giant to immediately put a halt to the deceptive act and pay the caution that sums around seventy-five hundred US Dollars per violation made and to discard all the information it has collected in the past.

Google announced that they are developing new measures that would limit the data shared on its Android devices. They also claimed that they would make the system less disruptive as compared to what Apple just did last year by requesting permission before allowing target advertisers to track them.

The tech giant has not provided an exact date period, to begin with, the new changes, but announced that it will continue supporting the current system for at least two more years.


H/T: Media Post.

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