Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Alphabet, accusing the holding company’s Google search engine of collecting personal data from users who have activated incognito mode in their chrome browser.
Back in January, the states of Texas, Indiana, Washington, and the Metropolitan District of Columbia filed lawsuits against Google for so-called misleading location tracking practices. The essence of the claim is that the settings of Android devices are too confusing, and the consumer does not always realize that he is sharing personal information with Google, including his location. Now, Texas has expanded its January lawsuit to claim the incognito feature of the browser.
In the lawsuit, Paxton’s Attorney General notes that the incognito feature implies that Google stops recording search history and geolocation. It is often in use āto view highly personal sites, such as medical history, political preferences, or sexual orientation. Or maybe they just want to give the person a gift; so they don’t get hit by a flurry of targeted ads. ” But, the lawsuit says, āin reality, Google fraudulently collects arrays of personal data; even when the user has private mode turned onā.
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Google Chrome: Google collects personal data in incognito mode
The Respondent clearly disagrees. The day before, a Google spokesperson said that, as before, Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit “is based on inaccurate statements and outdated ideas about our settings. We have always built privacy [control] features into our products and ensured strong control of location data. We categorically reject these accusations and will defend our position in order to rectify the situationā.
In separate news, recently, Google Duplex technology; which debuted in 2018 as an addition to the Google Assistant AI voice assistant, has gained a new and rather interesting feature: it automatically checks passwords in the Chrome browser on an Android device for theft, after which it offers to replace them.
If the password with which the user logged in is found in one of the leaks; Google Assistant will offer to change it automatically. The owner of the smartphone will only have to confirm the change process. The company noted that Google Assistant will redirect the user to the password change page and form its own combination. However, before confirmation, the owner of the smartphone will be able to make changes and, if desired, change the proposed password.
