Security News
In brief Google has settled another location tracking lawsuit, yet again being fined a relative pittance. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson's office announced the $39.9 million fine last week, along with news that Google will have to implement several state-ordered tracking reforms that clarify what data is being gathered and for what purposes.
Dish Network has been slapped with multiple class action lawsuits after it suffered a ransomware incident that was behind the company's multi-day "Network outage." DISH is facing at least five lawsuits seeking to recover losses for Dish shareholders who were adversely affected by the alleged "Securities fraud" from February 22, 2021 to February 27, 2023.
Apple "Unlawfully records and uses consumers' personal information and activity," claims a new lawsuit accusing the company of tracking iPhone users' device data even when they've asked for tracking to be switched off. The would-be class action lawsuit, filed in Pennsylvania, accuses [PDF] Apple of violating Pennsylvania's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act, as well as breaching its trade practices and consumer protection law by "Representing that its mobile devices enable users to choose settings that would stop defendant from collecting or tracking their private data - a feature they do not have."
Google has settled two more of the many location tracking lawsuits it had been facing over the past year, and this time the search giant is getting an even better deal: just $29.5 million to resolve complaints filed in Indiana and Washington DC with no admission of wrongdoing. The cases filed in the Midwestern state and the capital are similar to those settled elsewhere in the US in the last 12 months and center on allegations that Google deceived users into handing over location data, which it then turned into billions in advertising dollars.
Google has agreed to pay a total of $29.5 million to settle two different lawsuits brought by Indiana and Washington, D.C., over its "Deceptive" location tracking practices. The search and advertising giant is required to pay $9.5 million to D.C. and $20 million to Indiana after the states sued the company for charges that the company tracked users' locations without their express consent.
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit filed in 2018. The legal dispute sprang up in response to revelations that the social media giant allowed third-party apps such as those used by Cambridge Analytica to access users' personal information without their consent for political advertising.
Google has won a lawsuit filed against two Russian nationals in connection with the operation of a botnet called Glupteba, the company said last week. The defendants' move to press sanctions against Google was denied.
Google sued Dmitry Starovikov and Alexander Filippov - along with 15 other John and Jane Does - in December 2021, saying in the original complaint [PDF] that the botnet "Is distinguished from conventional botnets in its technical sophistication: unlike other botnets, the Glupteba botnet leverages blockchain technology to protect itself from disruption." Judge Cote said in her opinion and order [PDF] that the Defendants had "Attempted to negotiate a discovery plan in bad faith, requesting an exchange of electronic devices" - although they knew they could not provide the devices they said they had. According to the judge, the defendants and their lawyer told Google that pertinent discovery information was held by their former employer Valtron LLC,, a limited liability company based in Moscow.
Google has agreed to pay $391.5 million to settle a privacy lawsuit filed by a coalition of attorneys general from 40 U.S. states. The settlement shows that the U.S. attorneys general discovered while investigating a 2018 Associated Press article that the search giant misled Android users and tracked their locations since at least 2014 even when they thought location tracking was disabled.
Coinbase announced on Tuesday that it is funding a lawsuit brought by six people in the U.S. against the Department of Treasury's for the sanctions on the Tornado Cash open-source cryptocurrency mixer platform. "In the Tornado Cash action, OFAC did not target the bad actors or the property controlled by those actors; instead, it took the unprecedented step of sanctioning open source technology - a tool legitimately used by many innocent people even if also by some bad actors," reads the Coinbase announcement.