Google will pay $20 million to Indiana to settle a privacy lawsuit.

INDIANPOLICE (Channel News). According to state Attorney General Todd Rokita, Google will make a $20 million payment to Indiana to end the state’s legal dispute with the internet giant over allegedly dishonest location monitoring methods.

When discussions between the business and a group of state attorneys general came to a standstill, Rokitas, he said, launched a different complaint against the search engine giant. In November, the business and those states reached a settlement for $391.5 million.

According to Rokita’s declaration on Thursday, Indiana obtained about twice as much money as it would have under the agreement with the 40 states in the coalition as a consequence of the separate case.

This agreement, said to Rokita, “is another another illustration of our unwavering dedication to shield Hoosiers from Big Tech’s invasive plans.”

States started looking into the matter after an Associated Press report in 2018 revealed that Google kept track of users’ location data even after they opted out of it by turning off a feature the company dubbed “location history.”
As a condition of the agreement with Indiana, Google made no admissions of wrongdoing.

In a long statement released on Friday, the firm said that during the previous five years, it had increased openness and created tools to assist customers manage their data and reduce the amount of data it collected. The option to automatically remove data on a rolling basis has been made available to all new users, according to Google, who claimed it has activated auto-delete settings and turned them on by default.

Google said that it created options like Google Maps’ incognito mode.

The business said, “These are just a few ways that we have endeavoured to give greater choice and transparency.”

Google is accused of using location data to create in-depth user profiles and target advertisements in Indiana’s case. It claimed that from at least 2014, the business has misled and mislead people about its procedures.

Because even a little bit of location data might reveal a person’s identify and routines, Rokita said he filed a lawsuit against Google. According to him, such data may be used to infer personal information such as income, health condition, political or religious affiliation, and membership in support groups—as well as significant life events like marriage and childbirth.