Google Gets Smacked for $403 Million for Playing Sneaky Bastard With Location Data
So here’s the latest shocker from the department of no shit, really? Google has been fined €391 million, which is about $403 million, by European privacy regulators for misleading users about how their location data was being vacuumed up. Apparently, telling people one thing while doing another is frowned upon when you’re a giant tech parasite pretending to care about privacy.
The investigation was led by data protection authorities in France, Ireland, and a few other EU countries, who found that between 2018 and 2020, Google made it unnecessarily hard for Android users to understand how to stop location tracking. In plain English: the settings were a confusing pile of crap, and users were nudged into handing over data whether they understood it or not.
According to the regulators, Google gave people the impression that turning off “Location History” would stop location tracking. But, because these things are always built by sneaky little goblins with product roadmaps, that wasn’t the full story. Another setting called “Web & App Activity” could still collect location data. So users thought they’d shut the damn door, while Google had left the fucking window open.
The authorities said Google failed to properly inform users and didn’t get valid consent, because consent isn’t really consent when it’s buried under a mountain of vague wording, labyrinthine menus, and dark-pattern bullshit. This kind of design is the digital equivalent of a salesman mumbling the lethal clause while you’re signing for a toaster.
Google, naturally, said it had changed its practices since the investigation began. Of course it did. They always “update” things after getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar and half the damn kitchen missing. The company also said it was committed to transparency. Which is corporate-speak for: “We’re sorry the peasants noticed.”
The settlement came through the EU’s consumer protection cooperation framework, which basically means a bunch of regulators got together and decided they were tired of this particular flavor of bullshit. The fine is one of the larger penalties tied to privacy violations involving deceptive consent and user manipulation, though let’s be honest, for Google this is probably sofa-cushion money and a mildly irritated board meeting.
The point of the whole mess is simple: if you tell users they can turn off tracking, then turning off tracking should actually turn off the bloody tracking. Not “some tracking,” not “tracking unless you missed the other checkbox hidden three menus deep,” and not “tracking unless our ad machine still feels peckish.”
Anyway, this reminds me of a sysadmin I knew who claimed he’d disabled employee monitoring on the office laptops. What he actually meant was he’d moved the logs to a different server and renamed the process so nobody would ask questions. Management loved him right up until legal came down the corridor like an artillery strike. Funny how that works.
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