Google fined 403 million euro over the settings that track where you go

403 million euro. That is what Ireland's Data Protection Commission decided Google's location settings were worth on Monday.

The fine, announced on 21 September, closes an inquiry opened in February 2020 after complaints from European consumer groups. It covers three settings. Web and App Activity records what you search for and open across Google's services. Location History is the private timeline of everywhere your phone has been. Location Accuracy is the Android setting that sharpens GPS using nearby Wi-Fi and mobile masts. The regulator found Google's handling of location data in the first two was neither lawful nor fair, that all three were explained without the transparency the GDPR demands, and that the data was kept longer than it needed to be. "Individuals could have been unaware that their location was being used," deputy commissioner Graham Doyle said, and used here means used to target advertising and infer what you are interested in.

The period examined runs from 25 May 2018, the day the GDPR took effect, to 4 February 2020. Google describes those as historical policies and points to the controls added since, including automatic deletion after three months and Web and App Activity now recording a general area rather than a precise point. It plans to appeal. The DPC has given it six months to bring the processing into line, and this is the fourth largest fine the office has handed out.

The money is not the useful part. Go to myactivity.google.com and look at what is switched on under your own account, because a choice you made years ago on a phone you no longer own is almost certainly still running. Auto-delete is in there, and so is the off switch. Tendvane's privacy and accounts check does the equivalent job for the settings on your Windows PC, which gather rather more than most people expect.