Australia Finds Google Guilty of Misleading Customers on Data Collection

Australia's federal court found Alphabet's Google has misled consumers about personal location data collected through Android mobile devices, the country's competition regulator said on Friday.

Following Australia passing a law requiring tech giants - Google and Facebook to pay media companies for content on their platforms, both companies have been having an uneasy time. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has now said that the court found Google wrongly claimed it could only collect information from the location history setting on user devices between January 2017 and December 2018. The setting to control web and application activity, when turned on also enabled Google to collect, store and use the data and was turned on by default on the devices, according to the ACCC.

Users were not informed that turning off location history, but leaving the "Web & App Activity" setting on would not prevent allow Google from continuing to collect data.

The regulator said penalties of - so for an unclear - amount will be applied.

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