IRELAND’S privacy regulator examined whether people clearly understood how settings such as Location History and Web & App Activity could be used to track their movements and infer sensitive personal information.
Photo courtesy of Paul Faith/Agence France-Presse
Google has been fined more than €400 million by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission over how it processed users’ location data, following complaints that people were steered into enabling constant tracking on their phones.
The regulator examined Google’s “Web & App Activity,” “Location History” and “Location Accuracy” settings between May 2018 and February 2020.
The inquiry focused on whether Google had a valid legal basis for processing location data and whether users clearly understood how that information could be used.
Privacy groups had argued that location tracking could reveal highly sensitive details about a person, including visits to places of worship, hospitals, political demonstrations or other locations linked to private aspects of their lives.
“Location data can bring both benefits and harms to individuals,” DPC deputy commissioner Graham Doyle said.
“It can greatly enhance the utility of online services, but it can also reveal a significant amount of information about an individual, including information that is inherently private,” he added.
