Google Class Action Says iPhone, Android Users Illegally Tracked

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UPDATE: On Aug. 31, 2020, Google has asked a federal judge in California to throw out a proposed class action lawsuit that accuses the company of violating privacy law through its use of tracking and storing users’ location information.

A location sharing Google class action lawsuit has been filed by consumers who say the feature did not stop tracking them even when it had been turned off.

The Google tracking class action lawsuit argues that users of the Android mobile operating system as well as Apple’s iPhones who turned off the location tracking feature were still having data taken from their phone and stored.

The system and associated apps were supposed to cut off this feature in order to protect the privacy of the phone’s owner, but the Google location tracking class action lawsuit claims that the company continued to collect this information even when users specifically turned it off.

The Google privacy class action lawsuit says this is an invasion of any user’s reasonable expectation of privacy given that the company tells people they can turn off this tracking at any time if they wish.

The Google class action lawsuit was filed shortly after an investigative news story revealed that certain Google Apps continue to collect data even when the feature has been disabled by the phone’s owner.

Lead plaintiff Napoleon Patacsil alleges that the Google apps installed on his iPhone still tracked his location despite his attempted to turn the Location History storage choice off entirely.

He says in the Google class action lawsuit that the website for Google explains that turning this feature off in the phone will do so for all devices connected to that Google account, but that he found this was not accurate in practice.

The Google data tracking class action lawsuit goes on to argue that while turning off this section of the phone discontinued Google’s use of the data to pull together a timeline of locations that the user could look at for their own purposes, Google was actually continuing to track location details for their own records.

According to the Google class action lawsuit, this is a violation of user’s privacy as well as federal laws.

The Google tracking class action lawsuit specifically argues that this behavior carried out by Google is a violation of FTC laws prohibiting deceptive trade practices.

Patacsil also alleges that Google is violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the right to privacy as outlined in the California constitution.

The plaintiff argues that the instructions for turning off location tracking are misleading since this data is still captured and stored.

The Google class action lawsuit asks for a court order mandating destruction of all the data collected from the geolocation tracking technology for the plaintiff and all putative Class Members. The lawsuit also seeks damages.

The plaintiff seeks to represent both an Android Class and an iPhone Class nationwide, arguing that there are millions of Google users who might have their locations tracked and stored by Google under the current practices, all of whom face risk of harm in the past and in the future.

Patascil is represented by Michael Sobol, Nicholas Diamand, Abbye Klamann of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP and Hank Bates of Carney Bates & Pulliam PLLC.

The Google Location Tracking Class Action Lawsuit is Patacsil v. Google Inc.,  Case No. 3:18-cv-05062, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco/Oakland Division.