Des Moines, IA- Iowa is part of a multimillion-dollar settlement with Google regarding how it tracks users’ personal information.
Attorney General Spokesperson Ashlee Kieler tells Radio Iowa that the state is among 39 other states that bought claims. “This group of attorneys general alleges that Google violated state consumer protection laws by misleading consumers about its tracking practices,” Kieler says.
Kieler said the goal was to make it easier for users to understand what’s happening.
“Google has a couple of different ways that track you. There’s location history, but then there’s also this other setting within its web and app activity,” Kieler says. “And so it was a little confusing to confuse consumers because location history is something that you turn off, it’s off automatically, but then this other piece — the web and app activity — you have to go in and manually take that off. So it was tracking consumers when they thought they weren’t being tracked.”
Kieler says the company has agreed to make changes.
“Google is going to revamp some of its tracking practices, so it will show consumers additional information when they sign in. And so they’ll know more about what location tracking is on and off and how to do that,” Kieler says.
The states involved in the settlement will receive about $392 million from Google. Iowa’s portion of the settlement will be about $6.2 million.
