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Google was sued in May by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich. According to the case details, Google was alleged for deceiving users regarding ‘when and how’ the company tracks locations even if they are opted out of it.
Recently, new information regarding the lawsuit has come on the surface. The details mention clearly that the internet giant purposefully confuses the users when it comes to privacy settings.
The lawsuit’s new version was made public last week. The details said that the employees of Google have acknowledged that Google’s privacy settings and design choices are made complicated so that people do not understand how to opt-out from the location tracking.
One of Google’s employee said: “The user’s interface feels like it is designed to make things possible, yet challenging enough that people won’t figure it out.”
Another employee, while addressing the issue said: “Definitely confusing from a user’s point of view if we need googlers to explain to us.”
As a response, the tech giant said: “Privacy control has long been built into our services, and our teams work continually to discuss and improve them. In the case of location information, we have heard the feedback, and have worked hard to improve our privacy controls. In fact, even these cherry-picked published extracts state clearly that the team’s goal was to ‘Reduce confusion’ around Location History Settings.”
Google is continually facing legal scrutiny one way or the other for how the company collects and uses the information data. Last year in December, the company was charged for the third time by the European Union for data collection. It also initiated an antitrust investigation against Google’s leveraged data.
