Sept. 21 (UPI) — The Irish Data Protection Commission fined Google for violating location data usage rules on Monday.
Google’s fine, equal to roughly $460 million, is the fourth largest ever levied by the Irish data privacy authority and the first placed on Google. It is the result of a probe opened in 2020 over complaints about Google’s use of location data.
The Irish Data Protection Commission concluded that Google violated the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Google was hit with four violations for how it processed and retained location data and its lack of transparency in how it does this.
The Irish regulator enforces the European Union’s privacy rules on tech leaders who have European headquarters in Ireland. Ireland opened the investigation after a Norwegian consumer agency’s 2018 research found location data could be used to discern personal details about consumers.
Consumers’ religious orientation could be revealed by tracking visits to places of worship, political preferences by tracking attendance to political events and demonstrations, health conditions by tracking visits to hospitals and clinics, and sexual orientation by tracking visits to certain bars and other establishments.
The investigation looked into data tracked between May 2018 and February 2020.
“Location data is a type of personal data which is processed by way of location tracking, and includes data collected or processed by Google, which by itself or in conjunction with other information an individual’s location can be inferred,” Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner of the Irish Data Protection Committee, said in a statement. “It can greatly enhance the utility of online services, but it can also reveal a significant amount of information about an individual, including information that is inherently private.”
Several European consumer advocacy organizations have raised complaints about how Google tracks location data. Consumers receiving location-specific advertisements on their devices was among the reasons for these complaints being raised.
