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Tech giant Google has been fined £345 million by the Republic of Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) over misuse of location data following a six-year investigation.
Google has been hit with a fine of £345 million by the Republic of Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) over mishandling of location data.
The DPC undertook a six-month investigation across three specific features provided by Google: ‘Web and App Activity,’ ‘Location History,’ and ‘Location Accuracy.’ It concluded that the company had processed data incorrectly, stating that it was not ‘lawful,’ ‘fair’ or ‘transparent.’
Google had reportedly ‘infringed’ the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect in 2018. These are strict privacy and security rules within the European Union, and usually concern the personal information of regular internet users — in this case, Google customers.
Graham Doyle, the DPC Deputy Commissioner, said that ‘Google’s failures [mean] that individuals could have been unaware that their location was being used to, for example, influence them with ads or to infer their interests’ in a statement on Monday.
‘The retention of users’ location data for longer than necessary aggravated this loss of control,’ Doyle added.
Google must bring its data processing into compliance within six months alongside the hefty fine, the BBC reports.
Unsurprisingly, the tech giant has pushed back against the ruling and claimed that the fine targets outdated regulations that have since been updated. ‘We’ve significantly evolved our practices and launched robust tools that make managing location data simple,’ Google said to media outlets in response.
This includes ‘industry-first auto-delete controls’ that allow users to ‘set [their] account to automatically delete your data on a rolling three, 18, or 26-month basis.’
