Google has agreed to pay $391.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of 40 US states alleging illegal location tracking.

An investigation by prosecutors found that Android users they were cheated thought that disabling “Location History” in your device’s settings would disable location tracking, while another account setting, on by default and called “Web and App Activity,” allowed the company to collect, store, and use location data and personal consumer identification.

Location tracking, illegal and for 8 years

According to the indictment, Google misled users about location tracking practices since at least 2014, violating state consumer protection laws.

agreement It is an acknowledgment of responsibility and undesirable practicesgenerally against the right to privacy and also for the abuse of a dominant position, for which Google has been accused and condemned in the past and is still litigating in various regions of the world, although in this case the Internet giant says that these are practices that it no longer stands for and it was established “in outdated product policies that we changed years ago”the spokesman said.

The plaintiffs who sued Google were harsher: “When consumers choose not to share location data from their devices, they should be able to trust the company to stop tracking their every move«Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in a statement. “This agreement makes it clear that companies must be transparent about how they track customers and comply with state and federal privacy laws.”.

In addition to nearly $400 million (small change considering Google brought in $111 billion in advertising revenue in the first half of this year alone), the deal forces Google to introduce easier-to-use account controls and restrict the use and storage of certain types of location data.

Google will also need to be more transparent with its users about location data collection and tracking practices, and will need to display additional information when related settings change and view detailed information about what data it collects and how it uses it.