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Texas Sues Google Over Facial Data Collection

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The state of Texas is suing Google for illegally collecting Texans’ facial and voice recognition information without their consent, according to a statement issued by the state attorney general’s office on Thursday.

For over a decade, a Texas consumer protection law has barred companies from collecting data on Texans’ faces, voices or other biometric identifiers without receiving prior informed consent. Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, said Google violated this law by recording identifiers such as “a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or record of hand or face geometry.”

“In blatant defiance of that law, Google has, since at least 2015, collected biometric data from innumerable Texans and used their faces and their voices to serve Google’s commercial ends. Indeed, all across the state, everyday Texans have become unwitting cash cows being milked by Google for profits.”

The law imposes a $25,000 fine for every violation. According to reports, millions of users in Texas had their information stored. The complaint explicitly references the Google Photos app, Google’s Nest camera, and Google Assistant as means of collection.

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A spokesman for Google, José Castañeda, accused Paxton of “mischaracterizing” products in “another breathless lawsuit.”

“For example, Google Photos helps you organize pictures of people by grouping similar faces, so you can easily find old photos. Of course, this is only visible to you, and you can easily turn off this feature if you choose and we do not use photos or videos in Google Photos for advertising purposes. The same is true for Voice Match and Face Match on Nest Hub Max, which are off-by-default features that give users the option to let Google Assistant recognize their voice or face to show their information. We will set the record straight in court.”

This lawsuit is the latest in a string of major cases brought against the company. Earlier this month, Arizona settled a privacy suit against Google for $85 million. Indiana, Washington and the District of Columbia also sued Google in January over privacy invasions related to location tracking.

In a much larger antitrust case, 36 states filed a lawsuit against Google in July over its control of the Android app store.

Paxton has gone after large technology corporations in the past for their privacy and monopolizing practices. In 2020, his office joined nine other states in filing an antitrust lawsuit against Google, which accused it of “working with Facebook Inc. in an unlawful manner that violated antitrust law to boost its already-dominant online advertising business.”

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After the Jan. 6 insurrection, Paxton demanded Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google to be transparent about their content moderation procedures. This year, he also opened an investigation into Twitter over its reported percentage of fake accounts, saying that the company may be disingenuous about its numbers to inflate its value and raise its revenue.

In February, Paxton sued Meta for facial recognition software it provided users to help tag photos. The lawsuit is ongoing. However, Instagram is now required to ask for permission to analyze Texans’ facial features to properly use facial filters.

“Google’s indiscriminate collection of the personal information of Texans, including very sensitive information like biometric identifiers, will not be tolerated. I will continue to fight Big Tech to ensure the privacy and security of all Texans.”

In 2009, Texas revealed its privacy law, which covered biometric identifiers. Other states were implementing similar laws around the country during this same time. Texas was unique in that in the case of violations, the state of Texas would have to sue on behalf of the consumers.

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New Study Proves Popular Dating Apps Are Selling Your Data To Advertisers

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One of the universal complaints that most have with technology, social media, cell phones, etc. is the lack of clarity regarding privacy. Certain apps and services often say that they keep your information confidential, but how much of that is actually accurate? How many times have you been scrolling through your Twitter feed and seen an ad for a product that you haven’t even searched for on your device, but you were thinking about it? The lines of confidentiality have always been blurred when it comes to our phones, and now, according to a new study, we have even more facts to back that up.

An advocacy group known as the Norwegian Consumer Council recently conducted a study in which they analyzed the logistics of 10 apps, a majority of which were dating apps. The results found that these applications alone were distributing personal information to at least 135 companies. 

Some of the apps tested included Grindr, a popular gay dating app, OkCupid, Tinder, and then beyond the realm of dating apps they also analyzed some of the most popular period-tracking apps such as Clue and MyDays. They concluded that these services were sharing personal data, including users’ birthdays, ID numbers, sexual orientations, religions, etc., with advertising companies. 

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“Because of the scope of tests, size of the third parties that were observed receiving data, and popularity of the apps, we regard the findings from these tests to be representative of widespread practices,” the report states.

Their analytics concluded companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google were among the largest common company names that were receiving the personal data, along with more unknown tech companies who are in business with larger corporations. These companies use your information like a registry, and match you with products that they assume you’d enjoy based on your internet history, dating information, and hobbies. 

The NCC recently uncovered dozens of privacy violations in Europe once they enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an act that works to protect users’ personal information online. The biggest culprit was actually Grindr, which sold data including GPS location technology to advertisers to inform them about what retailers were within the vicinity of a particular user. The GDPR has been quite successful in Europe so far, but in the United States we don’t exactly have the same type of privacy regulations. 

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“There’s no reason to think these apps and countless others like them behave any differently in the United States. American consumers are almost certainly subjected to the same invasions of privacy, especially considering there are hardly any data privacy laws in the U.S., particularly at the federal level,” says Katie McInnis, policy counsel at Consumer Reports.

More often than not, these apps do let the users know that they share their data with third party advertisers, however, that clarification is often made in the fine print of these apps’ terms and conditions, which we all know none of us are actually reading. Technology users are able to adjust their privacy settings on platforms such as Facebook and Google by limiting what applications are allowed to have access to our personal information. This section is typically found in your account settings under the “security and privacy” tab. In the meantime, plenty of advocacy groups are currently trying to work with the Federal Trade Commission and Congress in general to pass more specified cyber-security/privacy laws.

For more information on how to easily protect your information and personal data from third parties, click here.