How MD Residents Can Claim Cut Of $23M Google Privacy Settlement

MARYLAND — Residents of Maryland still have a few weeks to claim a cut of $23 million Google has agreed to pay after settling a multistate class action lawsuit claiming the tech giant had shared users’ searches with third-party websites without their permission.

Claims, whether made by mail or online, must be submitted by July 31. The online filing deadline is 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time.

Google said the November 2022 settlement — the largest consumer privacy settlement ever led by a group of attorneys general — was not an admission of guilt. It requires the company to be more transparent with users and provide clearer location tracking disclosures starting this year.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson led the lawsuit, joined by 38 other state attorney generals, including former Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh.

Individual payments are expected to be around $7.70 a person.

“Google misled Marylanders about its location tracking practices. It built detailed profiles of users but failed to alert them to the extent of the sensitive, personal location information it collected,” Frosh said in November 2022. “This settlement will give users greater power to protect their privacy.”

People eligible for a share of the settlement are those who used Google as a search engine and clicked on the results between October 2006 and September 2013. Here’s what they need to do:

• Go to refererheadersettlement.com.
• To opt out, click out, click on the Exclusion Form page. You still need to register for a Class Member ID.
• To opt in, click on the Registration Form page. When you get a Member ID at the email address provided, you’ll go to the Submit Claim page and file your claim.

Rosenblum and Petersen launched the investigation after a 2018 Associated Press investigation revealed, “Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.”

Google had been misleading consumers about its tracking practices since at least 2014. Even when users thought they’d turned off location tracking in their settings, Google continued to collect information about their whereabouts through Web & App Activity settings, which are automatically “on” when users, including Android users, sign up for accounts.

“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” said Google spokesperson José Castañeda in a statement.