Google is one of the biggest companies on the planet, and that of course attracts some enemies, among them are several million phone users iPhone, who opened a class action against the Americans. More specifically, a lawsuit representing 4.4 million iPhone users in Great Britain is demanding 4.3 billion pounds from the American company for unauthorized tracking of them when they were browsing the Internet in their daily lives.
Google was sued because it would have ignored the settings of the Safari browser that asked it not to monitor the actions taken by users when they surfed the Internet between August 2011 and February 2012. Google would have used the data to identify users and divide them into various categories so that ads can be sold much more easily by the various advertisers who use their services to promote their products on various websites on the Internet.
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Google would have collected information about the mental health, political interests, sexual orientation, social class, financial status, shopping habits, or even the race of Safari users browsing the Internet. Using this data, Google divided people into various categories so that ads could be sold to them more easily, and this whole procedure is considered clandestine by those who sued the company.
"I believe that what Google did was quite simply against the law. Their actions have affected millions in England and Wales and we'll be asking the judge to ensure they are held to account in our courts. The court should not permit a single person to co-opt the data protection rights of millions of individuals for the purpose of advancing a personal 'campaign' agenda and should not allow them to place the onus on individuals who do not wish to be associated with that campaign to take positive steps to actively disassociate themselves from it."
Google would have already agreed to pay 39.5 million dollars in the US to reach an agreement with the initiators of a similar process, and was fined another 22.5 million dollars by the federal authorities, another 17 million dollars being paid to the local authorities from 37 US states. Although 4.3 billion euros are requested by the British from Google in this process, the initiators hope to receive at least a third of this amount, although nothing is certain.