Google sued over location tracking practices

Texas and the District of Columbia sued search engine Google on Monday over what he called deceptive location tracking practices that invade users privacy.

Two other state attorneys general plan to file lawsuits as well as part of a bipartisan effort to hold Google accountable over privacy_ Washington_ DC Attorney General Karl Racine's office said in a statement.

"Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access_" Racine said.

"The truth is that contrary to Google s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data. Google's bold misrepresentations are a clear violation of consumers privacy."

Google Spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the "attorneys general are bringing a case based on inaccurate claims and outdated assertions about our settings. We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We will vigorously defend ourselves and set the record straight."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alleged Google misled consumers by continuing to track their location even when users sought to prevent it_ reports Reuters.

Google has a  Location History setting and informs users if they turn it off "the places you go are no longer stored_" Texas said.

Google "continues to track users location through other settings and methods that it fails to adequately disclose_" Texas said.

In May 2020_ Arizona filed a similar lawsuit against Google over its collection of location data of users. That suit is pending.