Google agrees to $8.25M settlement over Play Store children’s privacy class action

Google class action settlement overview:

• Who: Google agreed to pay $8.25 million to resolve claims it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
• Why: The tech giant allegedly collected the personal information of children under the age of 13 without parental consent.
• Where: The Google children’s privacy class action settlement was filed in California federal court.

Google has agreed to pay $8.25 million to resolve a class action lawsuit alleging it collected the personal information of children under the age of 13 without parental consent. 

The tech giant’s settlement will benefit a class of all individuals younger than 13 years old when they downloaded or used an app from the Google Play Store and had their personal information collected by Google.

Plaintiffs in the Google privacy lawsuit argued the company collected the personal information of children under the age of 13 without parental consent in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

The plaintiffs claimed Google collected the information through its “Designed for Families” program, which was created in 2015 to allow developers to designate their apps and games on the Google Play Store as family-friendly.

Google allegedly collected data from children through its AdMob software development kit, which enables Google to collect data from Android app users and show advertisements to users while they are using the apps based on persistent identifiers.

Google settlement excludes New Mexico due to prior agreement

The class size in the Google children’s privacy class action settlement is estimated to be between 3.8 million and 10 million children, excluding those covered by a similar settlement the New Mexico attorney general secured in a similar litigation, Law360 reports.

Google agreed to pay $5 million in December 2021 to resolve the New Mexico children’s privacy lawsuit.

The plaintiffs argued the $8.25 million Google children’s privacy class action settlement “reflects as good of a number (or better) as could be achieved at trial,” according to Law360.

A California federal judge preliminarily approved a separate $30 million settlement over allegations that Google and YouTube violated children’s privacy by collecting data from the YouTube channels they watched to serve targeted ads.

What do you think of the Google children’s privacy class action settlement? Let us know in the comments.

The plaintiffs are represented by David S. Golub, Steven L. Bloch, Ian W. Sloss, Jennifer Sclar and Johnathan Seredynski of Silver Golub & Teitell and Patrick Carey and Mark Todzo of Lexington Law Group.

The Google children’s privacy class action lawsuit is A.B. v. Google LLC, et al., Case No. 5:23-cv-03101, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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