Google misled potentially millions of Android phone and tablet users over the tech giant’s use of location data

Google is facing massive penalties for misleading millions of Australians about how their personal data was stored and used.

Google misled potentially millions of Android phone and tablet users over the tech giant’s use of location data.

Google is facing massive financial penalties for misleading millions of Australian customers about how their personal information was stored and used by the tech giant, following a damning court ruling that could have global implications for the trillion-dollar company.

The Federal Court found on Friday that Google had breached Australian consumer law over two years from January 2017 to December 2018 when the digital platform tracked the “location history” of users of Android devices, even if they had turned off the relevant app in Google settings.

More than six million Australians set up a new Google account on devices using the Android OS over that period.

The court found that the typical user would most likely not have read the fine print about the software’s privacy provisions, and thus would have remained unaware that their “personally identifiable” data could still be ­accessed and used by the company via the default Web & App Activity setting, even when ­“Location History” was turned off.

The case, which was brought against Google by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, is likely to result in the tech giant facing a multi-million-dollar fine.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said he was “absolutely delighted” with the court’s ruling.

“What the court found was that Google misled consumers into thinking that if they turned off location history, that would stop Google collecting and keeping their personally identifiable data — and that was in fact not the case,” he said after the verdict.

“Data ­issues are only going to be more important. It is crucial … we get some court rulings in relation to what platforms can and cannot do.”

Mr Sims said the court’s ruling could have international implications, and served as a reminder of the obligations of tech companies to safeguard customers’ privacy.

The court ruling comes just two months after the tech giant signed letters of intent with several Australian media companies, including News Corp (publisher of The Weekend Australian), which will result in the tech giant paying news organisations for the use of their journalism content.

That long-running battle between Google and media companies was also closely watched by international news organisations who were seeking to cut similar deals with the digital platform.

Federal Court judge Michael Thawley heard evidence last year that Google became concerned about its own data collection loophole in August 2018, when Associated Press published a story under the headline, “Google tracks your movements, like it or not”. The article revealed that Google retained users’ location information, even after a user had “paused” the Location History setting.

Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Rod Sims. Picture: Sean Davey.

On Friday, the court judgment observed: “After the publication of the AP article, an urgent meeting was held between various Google employees, where the AP article was discussed. It was ­referred to internally as the ‘Oh Shit’ meeting.”

Internal Google documents showed that following the publication of the article, there was at least a 500 per cent increase in the number of users disabling Location History and Web & App Activity.

Justice Thawley found that Google had “misrepresented its privacy settings”, and thus had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct.

A Google spokesman said: “The court rejected many of the ACCC’s broad claims. We disagree with the remaining findings and are currently reviewing our options, including a possible ­appeal. We provide robust controls for location data and are ­always looking to do more — for example we recently introduced auto delete options for Location History, making it even easier to control your data.”

But the director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology, Peter Lewis, told The Weekend Australian on Friday that few users have the time to spend combing through the legalese surrounding the various privacy modes on browsers.

“It is hardly surprising that people end up in this strange world between accepting terms and not understanding them,” he said. “One would think selecting ‘no’ or ‘do not collect’ in a phone’s location history would stop the collection of data.

“But it just highlights the complexity of big tech’s terms and conditions, where in this case, data was still being collected due to a setting being switched on in another part of the phone’s ­settings.”