US: Arizona AG investigating Google

Arizona’s top prosecutor is investigating Google for its location tracking practices, the Washington Post reported. The investigation follows the revelation that Google continues to store users’ location data even if they have turned off Location History.

According to a public filing cited by the Washington Post, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has hired an outside law firm to help investigate a tech company for potential Consumer Fraud Act violations related to the “storage of consumer location data” and “tracking of consumer location…even when consumers turn off ‘location services’ and take other steps to stop such tracking.”

The document was dated just over a week after an investigation by the Associated Press found that Google devices and services store time-stamped location data even for users who believed they had turned off that data collection. The AP verified its findings with the help of researchers from Princeton University.

Ryan Anderson, a spokesman for the Arizona attorney general, acknowledged that there have been “recent bombshell reports depicting how the tech industry handles consumer data and what companies are doing with that information,” including the AP story, which “highlighted Google’s apparent tracking of consumer movement even if you opt out of such services.”

Full Content: The Washington Post