Man Sues Google For Unwanted Tracking Of His Phone Location

Google Sued For Tracking Location

A lawsuit has been filed against one of the most popular search engine giant (Google)  in a United States federal court for invading users’ privacy by tracking the whereabouts of the users’ smartphones even when the relevant settings were turned off.

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Naija News learnt that a California-based man filed the lawsuit against the company on Friday seeking unspecified damages along with class-action status to represent all the iPhone and Android users in the country who turn off their location history in order to not have their movements tracked by the company.

“Google expressly represented to users of its operating system and apps that the activation of certain settings will prevent the tracking of users’ geo-locations. This representation was false,” the lawsuit reads as per the report.

The lawsuit accuses Google of violating the privacy law in the country while citing a news report pertaining to the matter which was later was confirmed by a Princeton University computer scientist and former chief technologist for Federal Communications Commissions’s enforcement bureau Jonathan Mayer.

Besides this, Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington DC-based non-profit data centre, has reportedly sent a letter to the US Federal Trade Commission to see if Google has violated a 20-year-long consent order it agreed upon in 2011. “Google’s subsequent changes to its policy, after it has already obtained location data on Internet users, fails to comply with the 2011 order,” EPIC quoted its letter.