Fresh off the €50 million sanction it was fined by the French Data Protection Authority CNIL this January, Google now faces a class-action lawsuit in a French court on the basis that it violated the GDPR.
UFC Que Choisir, the consumer group that filed the complaint, argue that the confidentiality rules the tech giant has in place are ambiguous and excessively long and therefore do not facilitate the user’s right to block Google from carrying out certain data processing activities, such as sending targeted ads or tracking the user’s location.
The lawsuit comes after a recent effort undertaken by Google to streamline the manner in which consent is obtained and its announcement of plans to allows users to automatically delete location history.
UCF Que Choisir is seeking €1k in damages for each of the 200 Google users involved at this stage, in an effort to “end the insidious exploitation of users’ personal data, particularly those using Android devices with a Google Account”.
If the lawsuit is decided in favour of the applicants, this could effectively mean an entitlement for compensation for the approximate 28 million Android users in France.
For further information on this topic, please contact Sarah Cannataci on sarah.cannataci@fenlex.com.