Google faces lawsuit for tracking people even when they choose not to participate

• A class action lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges that Google tracks users on hundreds of thousands of apps, even when they choose not to participate in “Web and app activity” in settings.
• The data privacy lawsuit accuses the search engine giant of violating wiretapping law and California’s privacy law by recording what users see in apps.
• It also alleges that the tracking occurs through Google’s Firebase, a popular suite of software for app builders.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

Alphabet Inc’s Google logs what people are doing in hundreds of thousands of mobile apps, even as they follow the company’s recommended settings to stop such monitoring, a lawsuit seeking the status of the alleged class action lawsuit on Tuesday.

The data privacy lawsuit is the second in so many months filed against Google by the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner on behalf of a handful of individual consumers. The firm’s clients have also included Google competitors such as Facebook Inc and Oracle Corp.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing.

New complaint in a United States district court in San Jose accuses Google of violating the federal wiretapping law and California’s privacy law by recording what users are seeing in the news, transportation, and other types of apps even though they have disabled “Web and app activity” tracking in your Google account settings.

The lawsuit alleges that the data collection occurs through Google’s Firebase, a suite of software popular with app makers to store data, deliver notifications and advertisements, and track failures and clicks. Firebase generally operates within applications invisible to consumers.

“Even when consumers follow Google’s own instructions and turn off ‘Web and app activity’ tracking in their ‘Privacy Controls’, Google continues to intercept the use of consumer apps and app navigation communications and personal information, “claims the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, Google uses some Firebase data to improve its products and to personalize ads and other content for consumers.

Reuters reported in March that United States antitrust investigators are investigating whether Google has illegally stifled competition in advertising and other businesses by making Firebase inevitable.

In his case last month, Boies Schiller Flexner accused Google of surreptitiously recording Chrome browser user activity, even when they activated what Google calls incognito mode. Google said it would fight the claim.