Location tracking has been a controversial feature of smartphones ever since it was introduced. While mainly used to determine the user’s location for navigational purposes, it is understandable that there are some who might feel uncomfortable with companies knowing their location all the time.This was made worse in recent times when it was discovered that Google continued tracking users’ location even when the feature was seemingly disabled, which unfortunately for Google has since resulted in a lawsuit. Napoleon Patacsil from San Diego has recently filed a lawsuit against Google for alleged deceptive trade practice, claiming that Google had violated federal law.
The lawsuit reads, “Google expressly represented to users of its operating system and apps that the activation of certain settings will prevent the tracking of users’ geolocations. This representation was false. Despite users’ attempts to protect their location privacy, Google collects and stores users’ location data, thereby invading users’ reasonable expectations of privacy, counter to Google’s own representations about how users can configure Google’s products to prevent such egregious privacy violations.”
There are plans to turn this lawsuit into a class action lawsuit which will cover both iPhone and Android users. Google has yet to comment on the lawsuit, but the company had previously clarified its location tracking policy to make the language clearer, even if nothing has changed on their end.