TEXAS — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday announced his third lawsuit against Google, this time claiming the tech behemoth tracks the locations of Texans without their consent.
The suit, which claims Google operates in violation of Texas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act, accuses the company of continuing to track users’ location data even after they disable a tracking feature on their smartphones and other devices.
Specifically, the feature is called “Location History,” and Paxton claims Google informed uses that when turned off their locations would no longer be tracked but that the company continues the practice “through other settings and methods that it fails to adequately disclose.”
“Google’s founding motto is ‘Don’t Be Evil.’ And yet it systematically lies to millions of consumers in order to stack billions of dollars into its coffers,” Paxton wrote. “Big Tech companies like Google continue to erode the American way of life and often break the law to maintain their overwhelming dominant market position. This lawsuit is just another part of my fight against Big Tech. I’ll hold Google accountable for misleading and deceiving Texans. This is not only an unethical invasion of privacy—it’s against the law.”
A 2018 investigation by the Associated Press found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so.
For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information. An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating. If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a “timeline” that maps out your daily movements.
Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you’ve been. Google’s support page on the subject states: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”
That isn’t true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.
Google says it is being perfectly clear.
“There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people’s experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services,” a Google spokesperson said in a 2018 statement to the AP. “We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.”
Paxton sued Google on Jan. 19 of this year alleging false and misleading practices in a case involving broadcasts that included advertising of a Google brand smartphone.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.