Google being Sued

There is a class action lawsuit that is taking place in the UK against Google. The lawsuit is being brought forward by a campaign called "Google You Owe Us." The campaign believes that Google, "illegally took iPhone users' data in 2011 and 2012 - we are taking them to court."

The campaign launched on Nov. 29, 2017, and the twitter handle is being constantly updated with news articles and information regarding the lawsuit. The BBC reports "it focuses on allegations that Google unlawfully harvested information from 5.4 million UK users by bypassing privacy setting on their iPhones." The leader of the group, Richard Lloyd, says that users could be rewarded as much as "several hundred pounds each." That could be anywhere from 1.62 billion to 2.7 billion British pounds, or possibly even more, which would be a big hit to even the massive tech company. That is 2.18 to 3.63 billion US dollars that Google could potentially stand to lose.

This is not the first time that Google has been sued for this kind of behavior. In the summer of 2012, Google paid a penalty of 22.5 million dollars for the same reasons. Loughborough Echo reported that "Google agreed to pay a civil penalty of 22.5 million US dollars to settle charges brought by the United States Federal Trade Commission, that it misrepresented to users of the Safari browser that it would not place tracking cookies or serve targeted advertisements to those users."

This case is highlighting a worrying trend of Google's. This is not the first time they have been caught for something like this, and this case would set a precedent that companies cannot get away with bypassing security features on apps, phones and other devices. It would be a large blow dealt to Google and it would be a step in the right direction for electronic privacy in general.