Google will pay $391M to Ohio, other states in settlement

COLUMBUS — Google has agreed to pay nearly $400 million to Ohio and 39 other states to settle an investigation into the tech giant tracking of users’ locations even when they attempted to turn off the tracking feature in their account settings.

The $391.5 million settlement, announced Monday, is the largest multistate privacy settlement in U.S. history, according to Attorney General Dave Yost’s office. Ohio will receive nearly $13.4 million of that money, according to Yost spokeswoman Hannah Hundley.

Yost and other state attorneys general found that even after Google users “turned off ” the location-tracking feature in their account settings, Google continued to track their phones’ location unless they also turned off “Web & App Activity,” a lesser-known setting that also tracks where users are.

The attorneys general found that Google, by doing this since 2014, had violated state consumer protection laws, including Ohio’s Consumer Sales Practices Act.

Google profits off of people’s location data by selling advertising targeted toward users, based in part on where they’re located.

In addition to the money, Google agreed to:

■ Show additional information to users when they turn a location-related account setting “on” or “off ”

■ Ensure key information about location tracking isn’t hidden

■ Give users detailed information about the types of location data the company collects and how it’s used

■ Limit the use and storage of certain types of location information

■ Make Google account controls more user-friendly.

Google made these agreements as part of an assurance of voluntary compliance, which can be entered into prior to filing a lawsuit.

“Using someone’s phone to track them against their wishes is just plain creepy – and the behavior is no better from a giant corporation,” Yost said in a statement. “This settlement will put an end to Google’s stalking for profit.”