On Tuesday, June 2, Google was faced with another class-action lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit claims that the search engine collects user's data despite turning on the private-browser button. Therefore, the suit seeks $5 billion out of the company as a settlement fee.
Apparently, Google still knows what you do even private-browsing's on!
It is a common knowledge that when you tap the 'incognito tab' on your Google Chrome, all cookies and data will not be saved on your internet browsing history. Evidently, it doesn't. However, it doesn't mean that Google is not saving anything.
According to the report, a class-action lawsuit was recently filed against Google in California court. It was accused that the search engine had violated the Federal wiretap laws in the country as it collects info even when the private-browsing is on.
The complainants, Chasom Brown and Maria Nguyen, both of Los Angeles, and William Byatt, a Florida resident, all seek an explanation from Google and $5 billion for the damages it caused on the users.
"Google tracks and collects consumer browsing history and other web activity data no matter what safeguards consumers undertake to protect their data privacy," said the complaint, which was filed by Mark C. Mao, a partner at the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.
The lawsuit, specifically, states that Google collects data through its Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager, and other applications and website plug-ins, including smartphone apps.
This helped the complainants to know this illegal system when they studied and learn each user's friends, hobbies, favorite foods, shopping habits, and even the "most intimate and potentially embarrassing things" they search for online.
The class-action was said to be made out of 'millions of users since June 2016,' according to the lawsuit.
Google "cannot continue to engage in the covert and unauthorized data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone," said one of the complainants.
What happens is, whenever a user access Chrome using the incognito or the private-browsing feature on, the company still tracks all the activities of the user and sell it to advertisers or publishers.
Google's first time to be suspected of violating Federal Wiretap Laws
It is no longer new for Google to face a lawsuit filed by its users. Most of them discuss security and privacy.
However, according to the New York Times, this would be the first time that Google will face a class-action lawsuit allegedly violating the Federal Wiretap Act in the country.
This means that the user's right to privacy and interception are violated with the said lawsuit.
For now, Google has not yet commented on the issue.
