The tech giant has rejected the claims and argued that its basic record-keeping ‘doesn’t hurt anyone’.

Google is facing a lawsuit in August after failing to persuade a US-based judge that it did not breach the privacy of a number of its users.

The search engine giant is facing accusations of collecting personal data from people’s phones after they switched off a button to stop the tracking. Specifically, users of Android and non-Android mobile devices have accused the company of being in breach of a California law which protects against unauthorised fraudulent computer access by intercepting and saving their personal browsing histories without their permission.

In a court filing produced on Tuesday (7 January), US district judge Richard Seeborg of the federal court in San Francisco rejected Google’s arguments that it adequately disclosed how its Web & App Activity (WAA) settings worked, ultimately denying the tech giant’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit – which was originally filed in 2020. A jury trial is now scheduled for August.

According to the 20-page filing, Seeborg noted: “The WAA button is a Google account setting that purports to give users privacy control of Google’s data logging of the user’s web app and activity, such as a user’s searches and activity from other Google services, information associated with the user’s activity, and information about the user’s location and device.”

The judge’s ruling also noted that Google also has a supplemental WAA, which the filing referred to as “(s)WAA”.

He pointed out that the plaintiffs presented evidence that their data “has economic value”, and added that “a reasonable juror could find that the plaintiffs suffered damage or loss because Google profited from the misappropriation of their data”.

Although Google rejected the accusations levelled against it and had argued that its basic record-keeping “doesn’t hurt anyone”, Seeborg was not amenable to the company’s defences.

He expressed his view that “various interpretations of these disclosures render them ambiguous, such that a reasonable user would expect the WAA and (s)WAA settings to control Google’s collection of a user’s web app and activity on products using Google’s services”.

In addition, the judge cited internal communications suggesting that Google was deliberately vague in distinguishing between data collected inside and outside Google accounts because the truth “could sound alarming to users”. However, lending some potential credence to Google’s case, Seeborg also speculated that its employees may simply have been suggesting ways to improve the company’s products and services.

Earlier this month, NetChoice, an organisation which advocates for internet safety and freedom of expression and counts Google among its list of members, was involved in a separate California-based lawsuit in which a judge blocked the state of California from enforcing parts of a bill aimed at safeguarding children and teenagers from social media.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.