An appeals court in London on Wednesday revived a multibillion-pound privacy suit brought by an activist accusing Google of tracking iPhone users, ruling that he can seek damages from the technology giant on the behalf of 4.4 million consumers in Britain, reports Law360 (a subscription is required to read the entire article).
The legal action involves Google You Owe Us, a campaigning group founded as a result of Google tricking Safari into revealing the personal data of iPhone users between June 2011 and February 2012.
The group wants to secure compensation for the nearly 5.4 million people in England and Wales believed to be affected by the issue, reports TNW. Google You Owe Us believes that Google took millions of iPhone users’ personal information illegally in 2011 and 2012.
Google did this by bypassing default privacy settings on the iPhone’s Safari browser. This has been called “the Safari Workaround”. The workaround tracked Internet browsing history, which Google then used to sell a targeted advertising service.
