Google must face a class action privacy lawsuit alleging it collected users’ mobile device data without consent after a judge refused to dismiss the case in a ruling Tuesday.
The case, Rodriguez v. Google LLC, which was first filed in 2020, is now scheduled for a federal jury trial on Aug. 18,. Chief Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Fransisco said in his ruling it was unclear “from the perspective of a reasonable user” that the plaintiffs were consenting to the data that was collected.
The lawsuit centers around Google’s Web App and Activity settings, including a supplemental Web App and Activity subsetting “button” that determines whether Google saves “Chrome history and activity from sites, apps, and devices that use Google services.”
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that Google violated their privacy by continuing to collect certain data on their mobile devices after they turned off the supplemental App and Activity button. The data collected was related to users’ interaction with apps that used the Google Analytics for Firebase (GA4F) tool, a free tool for developers that uses Google’s Firebase software development kit to gain information about users’ app usage and ad engagement.
Google argued that users were aware that disabling the Web App and Activity option only prevented data from being connected to the users’ Google account, and that the collection of “pseudonymous” data through GA4F was done with consent and constituted “basic record-keeping” that did not harm users.
"Privacy controls have long been built into our service and the allegations here are a deliberate attempt to mischaracterize the way our products work. We will continue to make our case in court against these patently false claims," a Google spokesperson said in a statement provided to SC Media.
Seeborg disagreed that the case should be dismissed based on Google’s arguments, noting that internal communications revealed Google employees’ concerns that the Web App and Activity disclosures did not adequately clarify that certain data would still be collected.
“Internal Google communications also indicate that Google knew it was being ‘intentionally vague’ about the technical distinction between data collected within a Google account and that which is collected outside of it because the truth ‘could sound alarming to users,’” Seeborg wrote.
The decision comes after Google settled another privacy class-action lawsuit last year regarding information collected when users used the Chrome browsers in Incognito mode. As part of the settlement, Google agreed to purge records from more than 136 million users in the United States.
In 2022, Google paid nearly $400 million to settle a privacy lawsuit regarding the collection of location information when users believed location tracking was turned off in their account settings.
In a mobile data privacy settlement reached at the start of the year, Apple agreed to pay $95 million for collecting data from users’ voice queries to its Siri virtual assistant. The plaintiffs in the suit alleged the data was harvested and sold to third-party advertisers without their permission.
