A federal jury decided on Wednesday that Google from Alphabet $ 425 million should pay for the invading of users’ privacy by continuing to collect data for millions of users who had disabled a tracking function in their Google account.
The judgment followed a trial at the Federal Court in San Francisco due to accusations that Google had the mobile devices of users for more than eight years to collect, store and use their data, to break privacy guarantees under the setting of the Web & App Activity.
Users had sought more than $ 31 billion in compensation.
The jury found Google liable on two of the three claims of privacy violations raised by the claimants. However, it decided that Google had not acted with Malice, which means that the company was not liable for compensation.
A Google spokesperson confirmed the judgment. Google had denied misconduct.
The Class Action right, submitted in July 2020, claimed that Google continued to collect the data from users, even when the setting was switched off, via the connections with apps such as Uber, Venmo and Meta’s Instagram, which depend on the Google analysis services.
During the test, Google argued that the data collected “non -personal, pseudonym and stored in separate, secure and encrypted locations were.” The company said that the data was not linked to the Google accounts of users or an individual identity.
US District Judge Richard Seeborg certified the matter as a Class Action, with around 98 million Google users and 174 million devices.
Google has confronted with other privacy rights, including an earlier this year, where it paid nearly $ 1.4 billion in a settlement with Texas about claims that the company has violated the privacy laws of the state.
In April 2024, Google also agreed to destroy billions of data records from the private -Brown activities of users to arrange another lawsuit, who claimed that it followed people who believed they were browsing private, including “incognito” mode.
