A new suit alleges that Android and potentially iOS users are secretly having their personal data harvested by "voyeur extraordinare" Google, even if they are not using Google's own apps.
In its
second suit against Google in as many months, law firm Boies Schiller Flexner is accusing the search giant of illicitly gathering user data from mobile users. Where the previous suit was specifically regarding the use of Google Chrome, this one concerns the use of many apps on the Android platform — and potentially on iOS, too.
"Google is always watching," the suit,
seen by Law360, says. "Even when it promises to look away, Google is watching. Every click, every website, every app — our entire virtual lives. Intercepted. Tracked. Logged. Compiled. Packaged. Sold for profit."
As the suit notes, Google has an optional setting to prevent tracking of "web & app activity," but it alleges that this and other reassurances about privacy are "blatant lies."
"Google in fact intercepts, tracks, collects and sells consumer mobile app browsing history and activity data regardless of what safeguards or 'privacy settings' consumers undertake to protect their privacy," it continues.
"Google knows every user's friends, hobbies, political leanings, culinary preferences, cinematic tastes, shopping activity, preferred vacation destinations, romantic involvements, and even the most intimate and potentially embarrassing aspects of the user's app browsing histories and usage," says the suit, "regardless of whether the user accepts Google's illusory offer to keep such activities 'private.'"