Google has agreed to settle a US lawsuit claiming it secretly tracked millions of people who thought they were browsing privately through its Incognito Mode between 2016 and 2020.
The claim was seeking at least $5 billion in damages, including at least $5,000 for each user affected.
Ironically, the terms of the settlement have not been disclosed, but a formal agreement will be submitted to the court by February 24.
Google’s Incognito Mode is intended to allow users to browse the internet without creating a history of their searches, but the lawsuit alleges the company’s analytics, cookies and apps still allowed it to track their activity.
By doing this, the complaint says, Google was able to learn about ‘potentially embarrassing things’ they seek out online.
The lawsuit stated: ‘Through its pervasive data tracking business, Google knows who your friends are, what your hobbies are, what you like to eat, what movies you watch, where and when you like to shop, what your favorite vacation destinations are, what your favorite color is, and even the most intimate and potentially embarrassing things you browse on the internet – regardless of whether you follow Google’s advice to keep your activities “private”.’
It added that through the tracking, Google has become ‘an unaccountable trove of information so detailed and expansive that George Orwell could never have dreamed it’.
Earlier this year Google put in a bid to US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to dismiss the case, but she rejected it in August.
She said it was an open question whether Google had made a legally binding promise not to collect users’ data when they browsed in private mode.
Incognito Mode isn’t what you think it is
Incognito Mode isn’t a secret, untraceable path through the internet.
Your internet provider can still see where you’ve been, and so can the IT staff who manage the network in your office, so be warned.
What it means is the machine you’re working on won’t record your history, so you won’t forever be followed around by ads for whatever you were searching for.
Or at least that’s what it should do.
However, when the class action against Google was first submitted, it came out that even staffers at the tech giant joked about how un-private Incognito Mode is.
In one 2018 chat, an engineer proposed changing Incognito mode’s icon to ‘Guy Incognito,’ referencing the character from the Simpsons known for looking exactly like Homer apart from a fake moustache and top hat.
The lawsuit added: ‘Google must be held accountable for the harm it has caused to its users in order to ensure it cannot continue to engage in the covert and unauthorized data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone.’
It is suing Google under federal wire-tapping and California privacy laws.
Metro.co.uk has contacted Google for comment.
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