GOOGLE has been fined €403 million by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) for breaching European privacy law through its handling of users’ location data. The penalty follows a six-year investigation into processing between May 2018 and February 2020, when Google allegedly failed to make clear that location information could be used to infer users’ interests and influence the adverts they saw.
The issue centred on Google’s Location History and a separate Web & App Activity setting. Google told users that disabling Location History would stop tracking, but an Associated Press investigation in 2018, later confirmed by Princeton University researchers, found that Web & App Activity could continue saving location data. The DPC has ordered Google to bring its processing into compliance within six months and said it will publish the full decision later. Google told Bloomberg it had revised its practices since 2019 and introduced tools to make location data easier to manage.
Google said in December 2023 that its Timeline feature would increasingly store data on users’ devices and that the default automatic deletion period for newly enabled Location History would fall from 18 months to three months. Users can also review or disable Web & App Activity and, where available, Search Services History, and delete activity already stored in their accounts.