Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office announced Monday that the state of Tennessee, along with 39 other state attorneys general, reached a $391.5 million settlement with Google over the company’s location tracking practices relating to Google Account settings. Tennessee was one of the states that led the settlement negotiations, according to a press release by Skrmetti’s office.
“Companies should not collect one bit of data from consumers unless they provide complete transparency about what data is collected and how it will be used,” Skrmetti said in a statement. “This is just one example of how our office is working daily to protect consumers from Big Tech, and we’re nowhere close to finished on this issue. We are going to keep fighting for Tennesseans even when it means taking on the most powerful tech companies in the world.”
Tennessee will receive $14,560,086.13 from what is officially the largest multi-state Attorney General privacy settlement in the history of the United States.
The investigation into Google stemmed from a 2018 Associated Press article that exposed Google’s function that “records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.”
As noted by the Attorney General’s office, Google’s digital advertising business relies heavily on location data. In order to target ads for its advertising customers, Google collects personal and behavioral data about its users through the use of location data.
According to the Attorney General’s office, the Associated Press article discussed two Google account settings: Location History and Web & App Activity. The article revealed that the Location History setting is off by default until a Google user turns it on, while Web & App Activity, a separate account setting, is automatically enabled when a new Google account is set up.
Google violated state consumer protection laws by misleading consumers since at least 2014 about its location tracking practices, the Tennessee Attorney General’s office said in its statement; adding:
The scope of the Location History setting, the fact that the Web & App Activity setting existed and also collected location information, and the extent to which consumers who use Google products and services could limit Google’s location tracking by adjusting their account and device settings.
In addition to the payout, the settlement requires Google to be more transparent with consumers about its practices by:
- Showing additional information to users whenever they turn a location-related account setting “on” or “off”;
- Making key information about location tracking unavoidable for users (i.e., not hidden); and
- Giving users detailed information about the types of location data Google collects and how it’s used at an enhanced “Location Technologies” webpage.
The settlement also limits Google’s use and storage of certain types of location information and requires Google account controls to be more user-friendly.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
