European consumer groups want regulators to act against Google tracking

Consumer agencies in the Netherlands, Poland and five other European Union countries asked privacy regulators to take action against Google for allegedly tracking the movements of millions of users in breach of the bloc’s new privacy law.  Google is already facing a lawsuit in the United States for allegedly tracking phone users regardless of privacy settings. The consumer groups, which included those in the Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden, filed complaints with their respective national data protection authorities, based on research by their Norwegian counterpart. Consumer lobby the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) alleges that Google uses various methods to encourage users to enable the settings ‘location history’ and ‘web and app activity’ which are integrated into all Google user accounts.