iPhone users have decided to go against the privacy issues by Google and millions of users in the UK have decided to sue Google for collecting the personal information of people. They will be seeking up to $4.29 billion from the tech giant. The lawsuit filled in UK’s high court on Monday states that Alphabet Inc illegally collected the personal information of millions of iPhone users by bypassing default privacy settings of iPhones.
The argument states that the 4.4 million users who have signed the court filing should receive money from the tech giant. The group named as “Google You Owe Us” is led by the director Richard Lloyd of a British charity organization called “Which?”. It claims that Google bypassed privacy settings of Safari browser in iOS devices during 2011-2012 to divide people into two categories called “football lovers” and “current affairs enthusiasts” so that they could be targetted through advertising.
During the first hearing of the case in the high court of London, lawyers of Lloyd told the court that the tech behemoth Google collected personal information like “racial or ethnic origin, physical and mental health, political affiliations or opinions, sexuality and sexual interests and social class” from the iPhone users to use it for ads targetting. Mr. Lloyd said, “I believe that what Google did was quite simply against the law. Their actions have affected millions in England and Wales and we’ll be asking the judge to ensure they are held to account in our courts.”
The lawsuit filed by the group also alleges that Google uses a specific program which will help the developers track the browsing history in order to collect the personal information of the users. It is claimed that even though the Safari browser blocks third-party tracking via cookies, Google’s algorithm dodged its settings and accessed the personal information of the users. According to a survey, Google collects 10 times more information about a user as compared to any other social media platform. We will have to wait and see how this court case proceeds!