Google will have to answer to the court over allegations that the company collected users’ personal data in the Chrome browser without permission, according to a new ruling.
A US federal appeals court has overturned a district court ruling an earlier dismissal of the case Calhoun v. Google LLC on the grounds that the lower court should have assessed “whether a reasonable user reading Google’s privacy statements would believe that he or she was consenting to the data collection.”
Per The EdgeAt the heart of the case is the accusation that Google collected data about Chrome users without them opting in to Chrome Sync. Chrome Sync is a feature designed to sync bookmarks, passwords, and tabs between multiple Chrome clients.
Google back in court on appeal
The plaintiffs in the case allege that Chrome sent their browsing history, IP addresses and identifying cookies to Google without their consent. This was previously dismissed by Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers, who noted that this conduct was covered in Chrome’s privacy policy, and found users’ continued use of the web browser sufficient to consent to that policy.
However, on appealJudge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote that users may not have understood these disclosures because of conflicting information Google provided to customers.
“Google had a general privacy statement, but promoted Chrome by suggesting that certain information would not be sent to Google unless a user turned on syncing.”
Google is obviously not happy about this, a company spokesperson said The Edge that it plans to fight the case. And in the midst of all this is the announcement that Passwords will soon be synced between Android and Desktop Chrome clients without Chrome Syncas long as users are logged in to the browser with their Google account.
So, data is still syncing to a Google account without explicit permission being given via Chrome Sync, but at least it’s just passwords and a presumably optional measure designed to be convenient for users. It’s not an entirely new feature, either, since the change arrived on iOS November 2023