Google can pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle knowledge privateness violation lawsuits

Google has agreed to pay the state of Texas $1.375 billion to settle two lawsuits accusing the corporate of violating its residents’ knowledge privateness rights. Texas Legal professional Common Ken Paxton sued Google in 2022, alleging that it collected customers’ biometrics with out their specific consent and continued to trace their location even after they’ve disabled the characteristic. Within the Attorney General’s website, his workplace stated that it is the greatest quantity Google has agreed to pay to resolve comparable lawsuits for knowledge privateness violations. “For years, Google secretly tracked folks’s actions, personal searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry by their services. I fought again and received,” Paxton stated.

When the Legal professional Common filed the lawsuit, Google informed Engadget that Paxton mischaracterized its merchandise. Certainly one of Paxton’s complaints, for example, was that Google used options in Photographs and Assistant to scan folks’s faces. The corporate’s spokesperson informed us that Photographs solely scanned faces in order that customers can group photographs of the identical particular person for group. Google consultant Jose Castaneda informed CNBC that the corporate just isn’t admitting any wrongdoing or legal responsibility by agreeing to settle. He stated Google would not need to make any modifications to its merchandise as a part of the settlement. “This settles a raft of previous claims, lots of which have already been resolved elsewhere, regarding product insurance policies we have now lengthy since modified,” he stated.

In July 2024, Meta also agreed to pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle an identical lawsuit that accused the corporate of accumulating its residents’ facial recognition knowledge. Paxton stated Meta violated the state’s Seize or Use of Biometric Identifier Act “billions of occasions” by tagging images and movies with out customers’ consent.

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