Following an investigation from the ACCC, tech giant Google has agreed to pay $60 million in fines for misleading numerous Australian users on how their data was being collected between January 2017 and December 2018.
The original issue arose after it was discovered that some Android users in Australia were under the impression that the Location History setting was the only one responsible for collecting user data, when in actuality a second option named Web and App Activity was performing a similar function and was automatically turned on. The issue is reported to have impacted around 1.3 million Aussies.
In April last year the federal court found Google guilty of misleading Australian consumers on the nature of the collection of their personal data during this time period, and the fine was announced on Friday of last week with Google agreeing that $60 million was “fair and reasonable”.
ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said: “Google, one of the world’s largest companies, was able to keep the location data collected through the ‘Web & App Activity’ setting and that retained data could be used by Google to target ads to some consumers, even if those consumers had the ‘Location History’ setting turned off.”
Cass-Gottlieb added that the penalty “sends a strong message to digital platforms and other businesses, large and small, that they must not mislead consumers about how their data is being collected and used.”
A spokesperson for Google stated that the company had “invested heavily in making location information simple to manage and easy to understand with industry-first tools like auto-delete controls, while significantly minimising the amount of data stored”, and pointed out that the court had acknowledged the issue only impacted a portion of Australian users and not the entire user base.
