Google pays Texas $1.4 billion to settle informati...

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

When the Legal professional Common filed the lawsuit, Google informed Engadget that Paxton mischaracterized its merchandise. Certainly one of Paxton’s complaints, as an 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 individual for group. Google consultant Jose Castaneda informed CNBC that the corporate will not be admitting any wrongdoing or legal responsibility by agreeing to settle. He mentioned Google does not need to make any adjustments to its merchandise as a part of the settlement. “This settles a raft of outdated claims, a lot of which have already been resolved elsewhere, regarding product insurance policies now we have lengthy since modified,” he mentioned.

In July 2024, Meta also agreed to pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle an identical lawsuit that accused the corporate of gathering its residents’ facial recognition information. Paxton mentioned 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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