Google did not admit guilt in the settlement, and said it had long ago changed outdated product policies that allowed its search engines to collect location data even when users thought they had turned off location services in their app settings. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images),
ACROSS AMERICA — Residents of 40 states have a few weeks to claim their cut of a $23 million Google has agreed to pay after settling a multistate class action lawsuit claiming the tech giant had shared users’ searches with third-party websites without their permission.
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Claims, whether made by mail or online, must be submitted by July 31. The online filing deadline is 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time.
Google said the November 2022 settlement — the largest consumer privacy settlement ever led by a group of attorneys general — was not an admission of guilt. It requires the company to be more transparent with users and provide clearer location tracking disclosures starting this year.
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Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson led the lawsuit, joined by 38 other state attorney generals. Other states joining the lawsuit were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
People eligible for a share of the settlement are those who used Google as a search engine and clicked on the results between October 2006 and September 2013. Here’s what they need to do:
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- Go to refererheadersettlement.com.
- To opt out, click out, click on the Exclusion Form page. You still need to register for a Class Member ID.
- To opt in, click on the Registration Form page. When you get a Member ID at the email address provided, you’ll go to the Submit Claim page and file your claim.
Rosenblum and Petersen launched the investigation after a 2018 Associated Press investigation revealed, “Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.”
Google had been misleading consumers about its tracking practices since at least 2014. Even when users thought they’d turned off location tracking in their settings, Google continued to collect information about their whereabouts through Web & App Activity settings, which are automatically “on” when users, including Android users, sign up for accounts.
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“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” said Google spokesperson José Castañeda in a statement.
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