Search Engine Google is likely to pay four million iPhone users a compensation of 750 euro each after Court of Appeal’s approval for mass legal action against it over claims of collecting 4.4 millions users data.
The case could be worth a whopping 3.2 billion euro according to a Daily Mail report
The Senior judges on Wednesday concluded that consumer champion and former Which director and ‘Google you owe us campaign’ leader Richard Lloyd can bring legal proceedings on the US-based tech giant.
“Today’s judgment sends a very clear message to Google and other large tech companies – you are not above the law. Google can be held to account in this country for misusing peoples’ personal data,” Lloyd said, adding, “Groups of consumers can together ask the courts for redress when firms profit unlawfully from ‘repeated and widespread’ violations of our data protection rights.”
Lyod hopes to win at least 1 billion euro in compensation for an estimated 4.4 million iPhone users in the UK in this litigation.
According to Lyod’s claims, Google bypassed privacy settings on Apple iPhone handsets between August 2011 and February 2012. It collected sensitive information about the users and further used it to divide people into categories for advertisers.
In his ruling, Judge Geoffrey Vos said: ‘This case, quite properly if the allegations are proved, seeks to call Google to account for its allegedly wholesale and deliberate misuse of personal data without consent, undertaken with a view to a commercial profit’.