Google has agreed to pay a $13 million as settlement amount to resolve a class-action lawsuit concerning wireless network spying that occurred back in 2010. Reportedly, Google's Street View camera mounted cars were found collecting emails and passwords from unprotected Wi-Fi networks along the locations the cars drove by during 2007-2010.
If the agreement is approved by the judge, it would resolve the 9-year-long running battle of the tech giant. It was expected that the company would have to pay billions of dollars to settle this, alleging it broke federal wiretapping laws. But it appears that the company got off a bit easy from this case, considering that it is required to pay a negligible amount of 13 million to settle this down.
The legal actions began after revelations of the privacy theft and illegal data gathering. Several affected people who alleged the company violated the federal wiretap law, filed a class action lawsuit against the firm. However, Google apologized, calling it mistake and said that it had no such intention to intercept data privacy.
The company also defended itself claiming that the federal wiretap law does not include any prohibitions to intercept the unprotected Wi-Fi networks, though the gathered data was about to be deleted quickly as possible with no further intention of use.
Previously In 2013, Google settled a part of similar case brought by 38 states concerning the same issue. At that time, the company paid $7 million and agreed to halt and later delete the data collection of its Street View vehicles.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the nonprofit research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center said that it is very strange to see Google passing the same statement again, which it already revealed to the public six years earlier.
Google has apparently not commented on the settlement issue so far.
Source credit:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/22/tech/google-street-view-privacy-lawsuit-settlement/index.html