Legal Brief: Consumer Fraud Lawsuits

Types : Bylined Articles

Acquiring and storing sensitive information is simply part of most security integration businesses, thus it is vital to be diligent and responsible with business and sales practices

Fraud. It sounds serious, right? It can be, when credibly alleged in a lawsuit.

Google learned this the hard way recently – when, after nearly two years of hard-fought litigation, it agreed to pay $85 million to settle claims brought by the Attorney General of the State of Arizona under the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act.

The lawsuit alleged that Google misled and deceived consumers about the collection and use of their personal location data by tracking smartphones even when consumers disabled the “location history” setting. Among other remedies, the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act allows for civil penalties of up to $10,0000 per violation (i.e., per impacted user), which was among the reasons for the size of the settlement.