Security News > 2020 > July > Australian Watchdog Accuses Google of Privacy Breaches
Australia's consumer watchdog launched court action against Google on Monday alleging the technology giant misled account holders about its use of their personal data.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's action in the Federal Court is the latest litigation Google has faced around the world over allegations of privacy breaches.
The allegations arise from Google's move in 2016 to start combining users' personal information in their Google accounts with information from the same users' activity on non-Google sites that used Google technology, formerly DoubleClick technology, to display ads.
Google has also been closely involved with the watchdog in recent months over the Australian government's plan to make global digital platforms including Facebook pay for content siphoned from news media.
Google announced last month that it was tweaking its privacy settings to keep less data on new users by default, automatically and continuously deleting web and app activity as well as location history after 18 months.