Google Sued by Australian Consumer Watchdog for Allegedly Misleading Consumers into Signing Away Their Privacy

Technology giant Google is being taken to court for allegedly misleading consumers to give away a lot more personal information than they had expected, they will argue before the Federal Court that Google failed to “properly inform consumers” and did not gain their “explicit informed consent” when it changed a key privacy policy four years ago.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)  alleges that the “I agree” notification was misleading, because consumers, “could not have properly understood the changes Google was making nor how their data would be used” and therefore the consumers “did not” and “could not” give informed consent.

Aside from tracking people’s online activity on its search engine and platforms, Google also monitors users’ internet activity on “non-Google” sites and apps to boost its targeted advertising. Google says its notifications were “easy-to-understand” and optional. ACCC claims users were misled into letting the tech giant monitor their “non-Google” web browsing.

The ACCC considers that consumers effectively pay for Google’s services with their data, so this change introduced by Google increased the ‘price’ of Google’s services, without consumers’ knowledge.