A US appeals court has revived a class action lawsuit against search engine giant Google for violating children’s privacy through its services.
The lawsuit accuses Google of persistently tracking activity of users under the age of 13 on YouTube without obtaining parental consent. Google violated state privacy and consumer rights laws by gathering information on the preferences of underage users to show them targeted advertisements online, it says.
The case was brought by a class of children, who appeared through their guardians, earlier this year. It was dismissed, however, in August, with the court ruling that the claims against Google were preempted by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Under the preemption clause, private plaintiffs are not granted the authority to regulate collection of online personal data of users aged under 13; that authority lies with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys.
However, according to an opinion noted in the dismissal, the COPPA preemption clause does not bar the children’s claims. The suit alleges that leading content providers on YouTube, including Cartoon Network and DreamWorks Animation, lured young audiences to their channels, aware of their online activity being tracked by the platform.
This is not the first time Google has been accused of collecting personal information of underage users without parental consent. In October 2017, Google agreed to settle the charges of illegally collecting children’s personal data through YouTube, without the knowledge of their parents or guardians, for $170 million. Several similar cases were filed against the search engine giant in 2022, scrutinising its tools surreptitiously tracking consumers’ location information and online activities.
The company agreed to pay a record $391 million to 40 US states in a high-profile privacy settlement surrounding its location tracking practices in November. The lawsuit claimed Google tracked users’ location even after the tracking feature had been disabled on their devices. The lofty settlement was hailed as a historic win for Google consumers in the US.
In October, Google was fined $113 million by Indian regulators for forcing app developers to use to its own billing system instead of third-party payment processing services.
