In January, Texas, Indiana, Washington, and the District of Columbia filed separate lawsuits against Google in state courts over what they call deceptive privacy-invasive tracking practices. users.
Paxton’s filing adds Google’s Incognito mode to the lawsuit filed in January. Incognito or “private browsing” mode is a web browser feature that Paxton says means Google won’t track search history or location activity.
The lawsuit says Google offers the “private browsing” option which could include “visiting highly personal websites that could indicate, for example, their medical history, political beliefs, or sexual orientation. Or perhaps “Be they just want to buy a surprise gift without the gift recipient being notified by a barrage of targeted advertising.”
According to the complaint, “in reality, Google is deceptively collecting a set of personal data even when a user has enabled Incognito mode.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In January, the company said that “Attorneys General are suing based on inaccurate claims and outdated assertions about our settings. We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls to location data.”
Mr Paxton previously alleged that Google misled consumers by continuing to track their location even when users sought to prevent it.
Google has a “Location History” setting and informs users if they turn it off that “the places you go are no longer stored,” Texas said.
In January, an Arizona judge ruled that allegations that Google tricked users with unclear smartphone location-tracking parameters should be tried by a jury, refusing to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of the state.