The season of data privacy issues and claims is still not over. The latest to be blamed is Google or its parent company Alphabet, to be precise. And complaints are coming from users of Apple’s iPhones. They have formed a group called Google You Owe Us and have sued the tech giant for compensation that could run into billions of dollars, if the court decrees so.
Their main complaint is that their personal details have been wrongfully collected by Google though their devices have a data protection given by Apple. Google, according to them, managed to bypass the settings. Interestingly much of this information has been obtained from the documents filed by Google in a court in London. There are around 4.4 million people in this group and each could end up getting around £750 or $1000 taking the total value of this claim to over $4 billion.
The company has denied the allegations made in the suit and has further questioned the jurisdiction of the London court. Manufacturers of hardware and developers of software are trying hard to incorporate safety features that can prevent anyone from stealing private information stored in personal devices like smartphones and other devices.
At the minimum level, companies track the browsing history of an individual and bombard them with advertisements based on the search history. At the next level, they can sell the information to companies engaged in data analytics and use it for commercial purposes, like knowing people’s personal preferences etc.
Though the Google case does not strictly fall in these categories, if they have collected data, then they are likely to be made to pay for it.
The real billion-dollar question, literally, would be if the case will stand in the London Court since the UK laws may not have something similar to the one in the US under which these class action suits are filed.