Google to pay billion-dollar fine for monitoring incognito tab activity
Last Thursday (28), Google agreed to pay a fine for monitoring users’ activities in the incognito window (popularly called incognito tab). The lawsuit was filed in 2020 and revealed that even in private browsing mode, Google still recorded some user activity. The lawsuit sought $5 billion in damages, but the big tech company may have settled for a lower but still billion-dollar amount.
For those who are unaware of the incognito window/tab or were not teenagers after the 2000s, this private browsing mode is designed not to save the user’s data in the browser. Thus, anyone who wants to open a social network on a shared PC or access that other website with an “X” in the name, can use the incognito mode to not save history, cookies or not leave an account logged in.
Google Chrome does this normally, however, its creator still tracked and recorded some activities to generate data for Google Ads and monitor traffic on pages. This information was then linked to the user’s profile in Chrome. In other words, Google continued to use anonymous pages to profit from ads. This had been done since at least June 2016.
Settlement amount to be revealed in February
The final amount of the fine that Google will have to pay to the plaintiffs will be revealed on February 24, when the court in charge of the case will approve the agreement between the parties, putting an end to a soap opera that began in 2020 and which had a spin-off in 2022.
Google has not yet officially commented on the case and it is not in the interest of any company to disclose these values on its own. To paraphrase a great humorist, “wait for the process to end” to know how much Google will have to pay for affected users.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs accused Google of violating federal wiretapping law (which includes tracking on other devices) and California state privacy law. At the agreement approval hearing, more details about the users eligible to receive will also be made available.
