SOCIAL MEDIA / TECHNOLOGY / LAW

The Cost Of Tracking 1,300,000 People Online is $8

Or… Why the Australian government fine for Google’s privacy practices is nothing more than a slap of the wrist for one of the world’s largest tracking companies

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What would happen if you, personally, tracked 1,300,000 people in real life without their authorisation?

According to the Australian government — not much.

Making Alphabet Soup With Hot Water

The ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, or the A triple C as it is known) said that Alphabet Inc’s Google unit was ordered by the country’s Federal Court to pay A$60 million ($42.7 million) in penalties for misleading users on collection of their personal location data.

The facts of the case were as follows:

• Google breached consumer laws by misleading some local users into thinking the company was not collecting personal data about their location when using Android mobile handsets.
• When the user had turned “off” the setting to collect their location history but they still had web and app activity set to “on” and they then used one of its…