Google plans to destroy a trove of data that reflects millions of users’ web-browsing histories, part of a settlement of a lawsuit that alleged the company tracked people without their knowledge, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the class action lawsuit, filed in 2020, accused Google of misleading users about how Chrome tracked the activity of anyone who used the private “incognito” browsing option. The lawsuit alleged that Google’s marketing and privacy disclosures didn’t properly inform users of the kinds of data being collected, including details about which websites they viewed.
The settlement details, filed Monday in San Francisco federal court, set out the actions the company will take to change its practices around private browsing. According to the court filing, Google has agreed to destroy billions of data points that the lawsuit alleges it improperly collected, to update disclosures about what it collects in private browsing and to give users the option to disable third-party cookies in that setting.
The agreement doesn’t include damages for individual users. But the settlement will allow individuals to file claims. Already the plaintiff attorneys have filed 50 in California state court.
CBS News reported Google will destroy a vast trove of data as part of a settlement over a lawsuit that accused the search giant of tracking consumers even when they were browsing the web using “incognito” mode, which ostensibly keeps people’s online activity private.
The details of the settlement were disclosed Monday in San Francisco federal court, with a legal filing noting that Google will “delete and/or remediate billions of data records that reflect class members’ private browsing activities.”
The settlement stems from a 2020 lawsuit that claimed Google misled users into believing that it wouldn’t track their internet activities while they used incognito. The settlement also requires Google to change incognito mode so that users for the next five years can block third-party cookies by default.
“This settlement is an historic step in requiring dominant technology companies to be honest in their representations to users about how the companies collect and employ user data, and to delete and remediate data collected,” the settlement filing states.
“This settlement ensures real accountability and transparency from the world’s largest data collector and marks an important step toward improving and upholding our right to privacy on the internet,” the court document stated.
The Hill reported Google agreed to rewrite the disclosure that appears at the beginning of every “incognito mode” session to inform users that it collected data from private browsing sessions, according to court documents filed Monday.
“This settlement is an historic step in requiring dominant technology companies to be honest in their representations to users about how companies collect and employ user data, and to delete and remediate data collected,” the filing, submitted by the plaintiffs’ attorneys, reads.
In my opinion, Google shouldn’t have collected users data at all. Incognito mode was probably designed to imply that Google wouldn’t grab users data. Instead, Google grabbed it anyway.