{"id":378853,"date":"2026-09-24T03:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T10:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/google-hit-with-e403-million-fine-in-ireland-location-data-privacy-failures\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T03:15:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T10:15:26","slug":"google-hit-with-e403-million-fine-in-ireland-location-data-privacy-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/google-hit-with-e403-million-fine-in-ireland-location-data-privacy-failures\/","title":{"rendered":"Google hit with \u20ac403 million fine in Ireland: location data privacy failures"},"content":{"rendered":"

On September 21, 2026<\/strong>, Ireland\u2019s Data Protection Commission fined Google \u20ac403 million over GDPR violations tied to how it handled location data. The ruling covered Web & App Activity, Location History<\/a>, and Location Accuracy from May 2018 through February 2020. Regulators said Google\u2019s practices weren\u2019t lawful, fair, or transparent enough, didn\u2019t clearly tell users that location data could be used to infer interests and habits for advertising, and kept some of that data longer than it should have.<\/p>\n

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One of the main problems, the DPC said, was the way the settings worked in practice. Turning off Location History<\/strong> didn\u2019t stop all tracking, because Web & App Activity could still save location data. That gap was already flagged in 2018 by The Associated Press and researchers at Princeton, and it raised a basic question: were users actually giving meaningful consent, and did they really have control over those settings?<\/p>\n\n

For people who use Google\u2019s privacy controls, the decision matters. Google now has six months<\/strong> to comply. The company said the case focuses on policies that have already been updated since 2019, pointing to simpler controls, auto-delete, Timeline<\/a> stored on-device by default since December 2023, and a three-month auto-delete setting for new Location History users.<\/p>\n\n

The DPC says this is its fourth-largest<\/strong> fine so far. It also comes after U.S. settlements with 40 states, plus Arizona, California, and Texas. Privacy advocates welcomed the ruling, but they also criticized how long it took, six years.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On September 21, 2026, Ireland\u2019s Data Protection Commission fined Google \u20ac403 million over GDPR violations tied to how it handled location data. The ruling covered Web & App Activity, Location History, and Location Accuracy from May 2018 through February 2020. Regulators said Google\u2019s practices weren\u2019t lawful, fair, or transparent enough, didn\u2019t clearly tell users that … Continue reading “Google hit with \u20ac403 million fine in Ireland: location data privacy failures”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9349,"featured_media":378852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-378853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9349"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":378854,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378853\/revisions\/378854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378853"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=378853"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=378853"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=378853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}