Australia's consumer regulator filed a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc's Google on Tuesday, alleging it misled consumers about how it was collecting, storing and using personal location data.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said Google
had failed for almost two years from January 2017 to tell Android phone
customers that they needed to switch off two settings - rather than
just one - if they did not want the company to retain their information.
"We
are taking court action against Google because we allege that as a
result of these on-screen representations, Google has collected, kept
and used highly sensitive and valuable personal information about
consumers' location without them making an informed choice," ACCC Chair
Rod Sims said in a statement.
The ACCC recently called for
strengthened privacy laws as part of a sweeping overhaul of the rules
affecting global tech companies. The Australian government has announced
plans to establish the world's first dedicated office to police
Facebook Inc and Google as part of reforms designed to rein in the U.S. technology giants.
The
ACCC said the allegations against Google centred on two Google Account
location settings: ‘Location History' and ‘Web & App Activity'.
The
regulator said that Google did not make clear that both settings needed
to be switched off to stop the company collecting and using data from
either.
It added that in the second half of 2018 Google further
misled consumers by advising that the only way they could prevent the
company from collecting location data was to stop using certain Google
services, including Google Search and Google Maps.
The ACCC is seeking penalties and orders requiring the publication of corrective notices by Google.
A representative for Google in Australia was not immediately available for comment.
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