Source: AFP
A federal appeals court on Tuesday breathed new life into a lawsuit by Chrome users who say Google collected data even though it wasn’t “synced” with their accounts.
A panel of judges in California ruled that a lower court erred in tossing the case on the grounds that Chrome users had agreed to Google’s privacy policy and that the lawsuit should go to trial.
“We disagree with this decision and we are confident that the facts of the case are on our side,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said in response to an AFP inquiry.
“Chrome Sync helps users use Chrome seamlessly across their different devices and has clear privacy controls.”
Google launched Sync in 2009 with the goal of allowing Chrome users to access bookmarks, passwords, tabs and more across devices by signing in to a Google Account, the web giant said in a blog post.
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The appellate decision said the district court should have considered the privacy policy consent defense from the perspective of a typical Chrome user, rather than “attributing to that user the ability of an experienced business attorney or someone who can easily wade through a maze of legal jargon to understand what he is consenting to.”
“The determination of what a ‘reasonable’ user would have understood must take into account the level of sophistication attributed to the general public who use Google’s services,” the California appellate court judges wrote.
The class-action lawsuit filed by Chrome users accuses Google of violating their privacy and breaking the law by collecting data about them, even when it was “out of sync.”
The lawsuit represents people who browsed the web using Chrome without syncing between July 26, 2016 and today, according to court documents.
The appeals court also noted that Google did not refuse to collect user data. Instead, the company said only that users had agreed to the company’s privacy policy.
Source: AFP
