Irish regulator fines Google €403 million over location data processing

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Google €403 million ($463 million) following an investigation into the company’s processing of users’ location data, with the regulator finding breaches of EU privacy rules.

The DPC, which serves as the lead EU privacy regulator for many major US technology companies, said Google had violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) through three features — “Web & App Activity”, “Location History” and “Location Accuracy” — between 2018 and 2020, Caliber.Az reports, citing Reuters.

According to a Google spokesperson, the case concerned historical policies, and the company introduced robust tools and significantly changed its approach to managing location data since 2019.

Despite the findings, Google was given six months to bring its processing of location data into compliance with EU privacy rules. The company is also subject to three separate statutory investigations by the DPC, which said those inquiries were at an advanced stage.

The €403 million penalty is the fourth-largest fine imposed by the DPC, which has levied more than €4 billion in fines since becoming the lead EU regulator for many major US technology companies under the GDPR in 2018, largely because those companies have their European operations based in Ireland.

“As a result of Google’s failures, individuals could have been unaware that their location was being used to, for example, influence them with ads or to infer their interests, and could lose control over their personal data,” DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle stated.

The DPC launched its investigation in 2020 after receiving complaints from several European consumer rights organisations, including the pan-European consumers’ organisation BEUC.

The regulator found infringements concerning the lawfulness and fairness of Google’s processing of location data through “Web & App Activity”, an account setting that processes information about users’ activity across Google services, as well as “Location History”, which records users’ locations through mobile devices.

Google said it had introduced several changes since the period covered by the investigation. These include allowing users to automatically

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov