Google accused of secretly tracking drivers with disabilities
Google accused of secretly tracking drivers with disabilities
arstechnica.com
Google accused of secretly tracking drivers with disabilities
7 comments
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The article seems a little light on any single fact but does anyone know if there's any actual data that shows personal disability information being recorded/collected? Is the tracking code being served both on the public side and in the logged in portion of the portal? Absolutely no meaningful information was provided.
I know we can sue a sandwich, is this one of these lawsuits? "I found Google tracking code on the DMV site so it's time to earn my retirement" sort of thing?
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Wilson last visited the DMV site last summer when she was renewing her disability parking placard online. At that time, she did not know that Google obtained her personal information when she filled out her application, communicated directly with the DMV, searched on the site, or clicked on various URLs, all of which she said revealed that either she had a disability or believed she had a disability.
Her complaint alleged that Google secretly gathers information about the contents of the DMV's online usersβ searches, logging sensitive keywords like "teens," "disabled drivers," and any "inquiries regarding disabilities."
Google "knowingly" obtained this information, Wilson alleged, to quietly expand user profiles for ad targeting, "intentionally" disregarding DMV website users' "reasonable expectation of privacy."
So it's not like they were skimming the medical info provided, but if you went to the DMV page, Google knew what you clicked.
So they pulled all that.
But because they didn't set it up to exclude anything about disability plates, it violated a specific law in California from the 90s.
It's valid, although I doubt Google intended to gather info specifically on people with disabilities, they don't respect the law to ensure they follow it, they grab everything and pay settlements later if they need to.
This is America
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This is America
I think that's a very apt summary of the case. It's our super-lotto.
Everyone knows(like even my elderly mom) that Google, FB, etc follow you everywhere and that they use that data. I would have no doubt those sites knew she was disabled long before she visited the DMV site. It looks like she just found a way to monetize it.
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does anyone know if thereβs any actual data that shows personal disability information being recorded/collected?
That's basically the crux of the case right? The law is pretty clear, Google can't collect that data (or at least, if they do, then they'd have to comply with a long list of privacy regulations that I'm pretty sure they don't comply with).
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It's basically similar to this example from the health field:
Like givesomefucks said, it's probably not that they were actually after that information specifically, but that it just got caught up in regular website analytics that services put on their sites. You can still infer a lot about a person's health information by just looking at the URLs they visit, so I'd say it is a concern but I'm not sure it should go beyond companies/agencies/organizations needing to know about the risks and a "stop doing this" warning. If analytics services were doing this intentionally and evaluating and using that data explicitly at the direction of some human in their company, then I think it would be a much bigger issue and a much bigger story.
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7 comments
They are tracking everyone why would the not track the disabled i didnt realise they where exempt from tracking.