The Federal Court of Australia ordered Alphabet Inc.’s Google business to pay A$60 million ($42.7 million) in fines for deceiving customers about the acquisition of their personal location data, the country’s competition authority said on Friday.
The court determined that Google misled some customers regarding the personal location data that was collected through their Android mobile devices between January 2017 and December 2018.
Google deceived customers into believing that the “location history” setting on their Android phones was the only way for it to gather location data, according to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC).
However, a tool to monitor web and application activity also permitted the gathering and storing of local data. The organisation asserted that Google fixed the issue in 2018.Google claimed to have fixed the problem in an email and claimed to have simplified the management and understanding of location data.
