Google will destroy some data records as part of a settlement over consumers’ use of “incognito” mode while browsing the internet.
The privacy lawsuit was originally filed in 2020 and accused Google of collecting purportedly private browsing data from Chrome users deploying the “incognito” setting.
Google will “delete and/or remediate billions of data records that reflect class members’ private browsing activities,” according to a legal filing disclosed Monday in San Francisco federal court.
The tech giant will also be required to block third-party cookies by default for the next five years as part of the settlement.
The value in the suit is more than $5 billion, based on calculations of ad sales the too-be-deleted data could have been used for.
“This settlement is an historic step in requiring dominant technology companies to be honest in their representations to users about how the companies collect and employ user data, and to delete and remediate data collected,” the settlement filing stated.
Google took a defiant stance.
“We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless,” the company said in a statement, adding it is only being required to “delete old personal technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”
With News Wire Services
