How often do you use incognito mode for private browsing? How secure do you think it is?
Lawyers have filed a proposed class-action lawsuit seeking a minimum of $5 billion against Google for illegally collecting information during their private browsing sessions.
The tech giant is accused of encroachment on people's privacy and tracking their internet use even when browsers are set to "private" mode. The Alphabet unit has been surreptitiously collecting data about what users are viewing online and where are they browsing from.
Google gathers information through Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager and other applications and website plug-ins, including smartphone apps, no matter whether users click on Google-supported ads or not. The information collected caters to Google’s learning about users’ friends, hobbies, food choices and even the “most intimate and potentially embarrassing things” they search for online, the complaint said. Additionally, it also said that Google “cannot continue to engage in the covert and unauthorized data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone”.
The lawsuit alleges Google for violating a California law that requires the consent of all parties to read or learn the contents of private communication. Its proposed class include millions of users who have browsed ‘privately’ since June 1, 2016.
The firm in defence has put Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesperson in frontline who said that they strongly dispute these claims, and will defend themselves vigorously against them.
“Incognito mode in Chrome gives you the choice to browse the internet without your activity being saved to your browser or device. As we clearly state each time you open a new incognito tab, websites might be able to collect information about your browsing activity during your session," Jose said.
According to a report in The New York Times, the class-action lawsuit was filed in in the federal court in San Jose, California.
The case is Brown et al v Google LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 20-03664. Boies Schiller & Flexner is representing the plaintiffs Chasom Brown, Maria Nguyen, and William Byatt.
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