Two Michigan women are suing Google over location data collected by Android devices, a week after Apple was named in a lawsuit citing privacy violations with the iPhone logging similar data.
The $50 million lawsuit against Google seeks to stop Google from selling phones with software that can track a user's location, the Detroit News reported today.
The lawsuit was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Detroit on behalf of plaintiffs Julie Brown and Kayla Molaski, who are seeking class action status for the suit. Their lawyer, Steven Budaj, argues in the complaint that the tracking of Android owners' location "puts users at serious risk of privacy invasions, including stalking."
Google acknowledged last week that it collects location information--including GPS current location, timestamps, nearby Wi-Fi network addresses, and device IDs--from Android devices but said it was not traceable to a specific individual. Users can disable the GPS feature, but then they won't get as much function out of maps and other location-based services.
Google representatives did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the lawsuit this afternoon.
The lawsuit against Apple filed in Florida last week also seeks class action status and accuses Apple of violating privacy laws, as well as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by keeping a log of user locations without offering users a way to disable that.
The matter first came to light last week when two researchers said they had discovered that the iPhone collects and logs current and historical location information without user permission or warning, and stores it unencrypted on the device.
In addition to the lawsuits, the controversy has prompted lawmakers to seek an FTC probe of the issue and questions from attorneys general in Connecticut and Illinois.
After a week of silence, Apple finally spoke up about the matter, explaining in an FAQ that it was collecting the data to get more accurate location data for eventual use in a traffic database and blamed a software bug for storing an excess amount of it on the devices.
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