Data protection

Tracked against its will: Google faces class action lawsuit

Although smartphone users refused to do so, Google is said to have collected their data.

(Bild: AFP)

Google could face severe penalties due to the alleged illegal collection of user data. A US court allowed a class action lawsuit to proceed on Wednesday. This accuses the internet giant of continuing to collect information about the behavior of smartphone users even though they had switched off tracking in the company's software.

The plaintiffs see this as a violation of privacy and a breach of the laws of the US state of California, where Google is based. The company argues that the collection of certain basic information "harms no one".

Violations in the past
According to the court, however, the company has not sufficiently informed users about this. There were also indications that it had deliberately kept the statements vague because users might find the truth "alarming". Google rejected this. Lawyers for the plaintiffs were initially unavailable for comment. The main trial is scheduled to begin on August 18.

Google has had to answer to the courts several times in recent years for collecting data. Last year, for example, the company had to destroy billions of data records that it had collected from users even though they had used the incognito mode of Google's Chrome browser.