This agreement puts an end to investigations on the way in which the search engine collects data from its users, without their consent, for advertising targeting purposes.
Le Monde
This is the most important agreement ever concluded with several states on the protection of personal information in the United States, according to the Attorney General of New Jersey. Google has agreed to pay $ 391.5 million (around 378 million euros) to forty American states to end investigations on how the search engine collects user data.
According to the coalition of states that conducted the survey, the Internet giant violated the right of users to confidentiality by collecting geolocation data without their authorization, for advertising targeting purposes. “In accordance with the improvements we have made in recent years, we have ended this investigation which was based on obsolete regulations, which we have changed years ago,” said a google spokesperson, contacted by The France-Presse agency.
more clarity
“Google cannot claim to give tools to control their personal information to users, and then ignore these features to collect and sell data to advertisers, unlike the express demand for Internet users,” said Matthew Platkin, the Attorney General of New Jersey, quoted in press release . “When the platforms violate consumers to respect for privacy, they endanger them,” he insists.
Under the terms of the agreement, Google must indicate more clearly which geolocation data is harvested, including when the functionality is deactivated on a service but not on others (search engine, applications like Google Maps, etc. .).
Unlike the European Union (EU), the United States does not have a federal law on the protection of personal data. Some states, such as California or Colorado, have adopted texts similar to that of the EU.
Google, like its neighbors of Silicon Valley, has been pinned many times on its economic model, which consists in selling finely targeted advertising spaces on a very large scale, and therefore depends on the data that the group harvested on the Internet users, from their online navigation to use free applications.