Sidney, Europe Brief News – Tech giant Google has been found to have breached Australian consumer laws by misleading some users about their personal data.
Tech giant Google has agreed to pay $60 million in penalties flowing from a long-running court fight with the Australian competition watchdog.
The court found the tech giant was misleading users on the collection of personal location data.
In April last year, the Federal Court of Australia found Google breached consumer laws by misleading some local users into thinking the company was not collecting personal data about their location via mobile devices with Android operating systems.
The case revolved around whether it was sufficiently clear Google would still collect and access location data when a user’s location history was set to “off” but their web and app activity was “on” and one of its apps was used.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission at the time called the judgement a clear message to digital platforms to be up front with consumers about what is happening with their data.
On Friday, a brief Federal Court hearing was told a $60 million penalty was agreed as “fair and reasonable” between the parties and that a joint submission had been submitted to Justice Thomas Thawley.
Justice Thawley said he was satisfied the fine was in an appropriate range and thanked the parties before adjourning the case until later on Friday.
