Alphabet, the parent company of Google, must pay a fine of USD 391.5 million (379 million euros) for using location data of Google users without permission. A judge in Michigan ruled Monday, writes news agency Reuters. The amount will be paid to forty US states that had brought the case.
In 2018 it turned out that Google stored the location data of users, even if they had not given permission for this. This violated the consumer protection laws of several states. Dozens of states in the US then joined a lawsuit demanding changes to the tech giant’s transparency policy.
Those changes are also coming, Google announced on Monday. The company will implement updates that give users more control over their location data, make it easier to delete data and have more insight into what data Google stores about them.