AG Paxton expands Google lawsuit to include private browsing, calls it ‘deceptive’

AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Google’s “incognito mode” implies the tech giant will not be tracking users’ search history and location, but Paxton alleges that is not the case.

The state’s top attorney amended a previous lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of violating the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

In late January, Paxton joined four other bipartisan attorneys general suing Google for allegedly tracking users’ location data without their consent. He said even if users opted out of sharing their location data, the company still used “ill-gotten data” to sent targeted advertisements to that user, “thereby earning enormous profits from wrongfully collected personal data.”

Now, the Republican attorney general alleges Google’s representations users can hide their search history by using “incognito mode,” or private browsing, similarly misleads Texans.

“Google claims to give users control and to respect their choice, but in reality, regardless of the settings users select, the Big Tech giant is still hard at work collecting and monetizing the location and other personal information that users seek to keep private,” Paxton said. “I am not going to let Google succeed in deceiving Texans.

A Google spokesperson provided KXAN with the following statement: “The Attorney General’s case is, once again, based on inaccurate claims and outdated assertions about our settings. We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We strongly dispute these claims and will vigorously defend ourselves to set the record straight.”