Google fined millions for collecting location data while disabling GPS

The Google She agreed to pay $85 million (about 441 million Brazilian riyals) to close a lawsuit accusing the company of committing User location data collectioneven when GPS is turned off.

The lawsuit was filed in 2020 in Arizona, US, and the attorney general alleges that Google uses “fuzzy patterns” to get a user’s location to display ads.

In the lawsuit, authorities allege that Google used weather apps to collect a user’s location. This happened even when GPS was turned off in the smartphone settings.

The second accusation against Google is that the company overcomplicates privacy settings to make it difficult to access the site’s features. As a result, as much as you disable the smartphone’s GPS, the user is often unaware that Google continues to collect data.

Commenting on the settlement, Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesperson, noted that the lawsuit was brought based on outdated privacy policies.

We provide simple controls and options for automatic location data deletion and are always working to reduce the data we collect.

This is not the first time that Google has had to pay fines for collecting location data. The company was already Processed in Australia, France and UK.