Google has reached a settlement agreement regarding a lawsuit related to privacy violations while using the 'incognito' mode in browsers. The terms of the agreement are confidential, but the initial lawsuit was filed for $5 billion, calculating compensation at $5000 for each user of the 'incognito' mode. The terms of the settlement have been laid out by the parties involved but still need to be approved by a federal judge at a hearing scheduled for February 24.
Google was accused of violating federal laws in the U.S. regarding wiretapping and privacy laws in the state of California. The lawsuit alleges that Google may have used analytics data (likely referring to statistics collected through Google Analytics), browser cookies, and its applications to track user activity when enabling 'incognito' mode in Chrome, as well as when using private browsing mode in other browsers. Such tracking allowed for uncontrolled access to information about friends, hobbies, favorite foods, shopping preferences, and embarrassing matters that users did not wish to disclose, believing that they were using 'incognito' mode to protect their privacy.
It is also mentioned that Google chose the misleading name 'incognito', creating the impression that users are granted anonymity and protection from tracking, rather than simply not saving browsing history and clearing related site data, such as cookies. Thus, Google led users to believe that it would not track actions in this mode, while in reality, it continued to employ its advertising technologies and other tracking methods to collect data on visits and activity on websites.
Source: opennet.ru
