US judge dismisses Google privacy class action lawsuit

Judge Gonzalez Rogers said the case cannot be considered as a class action because each Chrome user may understand and agree to Google's data collection policies differently.

On June 9, the District Court in Oakland, California dismissed a class action lawsuit against Google, in which the plaintiff accused the company of illegally collecting personal data of Chrome browser users, even if they were not synced with a Google account.

In court, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said the lawsuit could not be considered as a class action because each Chrome user could understand and agree to Google's data collection policy differently.

She found that a case-by-case review was necessary, and that the factors involved in user consent were too complex to be lumped together. As a result, she decided to dismiss the class action, meaning it cannot be refiled.

The plaintiffs have yet to respond. Google, meanwhile, welcomed the ruling, saying Chrome Sync provides "clear privacy controls."

The case stems from a controversy surrounding whether Google collects information from users who do not enable the sync feature on Chrome, despite stating that users "do not need to provide any personal information" to use the browser.

Previously, a federal appeals court in San Francisco in August 2023 asked the trial court to consider whether users consented to Google collecting data when they used the website.

The case, currently before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, is one of several privacy lawsuits Google faces, including a 2023 case in which the company agreed to delete billions of data records to settle allegations that it tracked users using Chrome's "incognito" mode./.

(TTXVN/Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/tham-phan-my-bac-vu-kien-tap-the-ve-quyen-rieng-tu-cua-google-post1043655.vnp