Chrome users tracked by Google without consent

San Francisco: Tech giant Google will face a class-action lawsuit in the US over alleged data collection via Chrome browser without users' consent, a court here has ruled. A federal appeals court in the state of California reversed a December 2022 ruling that dismissed the earlier case against Google.

The lawsuit, filed in 2020, alleged that Google collected data from Chrome users, regardless of whether they enabled Chrome sync. “The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favour of Google, LLC, in a class action alleging that the company surreptitiously collected users’ data in violation of various state and federal laws, and remanded for further proceedings,” read the court ruling.

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs claimed Chrome “intentionally and unlawfully” sent Google browsing history, IP addresses, persistent cookie identifiers, and unique browser identifiers without their explicit permission.

The new ruling explained that “the district court should have reviewed the terms of Google’s various disclosures and decided whether a reasonable user reading them would think that he or she was consenting to the data collection”. By focusing on “browser agnosticism” instead of conducting the reasonable person inquiry, “the district court failed to apply the correct standard”.

A Google spokesperson said that the company had a general privacy disclosure yet promoted Chrome by suggesting that certain information would not be sent to Google unless a user turned on sync”. “We disagree with this ruling and are confident the facts of the case are on our side. Chrome Sync helps people use Chrome seamlessly across their different devices and has clear privacy controls,” the Google spokesperson was quoted as saying in reports.