Two years in the past, the Arizona Attorney General sued Google for allegedly tricking folks into giving up their location knowledge, even after they tried to show off the corporate’s location knowledge settings. Google agreed to pay $85 million to settle the lawsuit this week and repair an incorrect description of what its Location History setting truly does. The search large tried to demystify its dealing with of your location knowledge a bit. Experts and Gizmodo’s personal makes an attempt recommend the corporate’s success was middling at greatest and deliberately complicated at worst.

Google has a setting known as Location History. It controls whether or not or not Google makes a pleasant little map you possibly can take a look at with an inventory of the place you’ve been. What it doesn’t management is whether or not Google collects your location knowledge. It was fairly onerous to determine that out; for years the corporate’s assist web page stated “With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.” If you needed to cease location knowledge assortment altogether, although, you needed to alter a second setting, known as Web & App Activity.

That’s nonetheless true. Location History nonetheless doesn’t flip off location knowledge assortment, the one factor that’s modified is Google’s description of what the setting does. Google didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Now while you flip off Location History, you see a popup—which begins by telling you about all causes it’s best to depart the setting on—after which mentions in paragraph three of six that “This setting does not affect other location services on your device.”

“There’s a lot of fine print when you pause location history. Most people aren’t going to read it, and even if you do, it is confusing,” says Lorrie Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University whose analysis contains privateness settings and interfaces. “I’m a privacy expert and I still find it difficult to understand exactly what is getting turned off.”

The change is unquestionably an enchancment. The unique settings have been so complicated that even Google workers complained about them. “Speaking as a user, WTF? More specifically I **thought** I had location tracking turned off on my phone,” one Google engineer stated, in accordance with paperwork that surfaced in the course of the lawsuit.

Google did repair the issue which prompted the Arizona lawsuit. The language describing the Location History management isn’t actually incorrect anymore. But when you don’t learn rigorously, it will be straightforward to regulate the Location History setting with out realizing that Google would nonetheless be following you round.

The settlement was a giant financial win for Arizona. “I am proud of this historic settlement that proves no entity, not even big tech companies, is above the law,” Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich stated in a press launch. But the settlement doesn’t pressure Google to make any adjustments, or lay out guidelines concerning the firm’s conduct going ahead. Google didn’t admit any wrongdoing within the settlement, however the firm is dealing with lawsuits over the identical concern in Washington, D.C., Indiana, Texas, and Washington State.

The Arizona settlement is emblematic of points that maintain cropping up in tech business regulation, says Jonathan Mayer, a professor at Princeton University, who consulted on the original report that uncovered Google’s location settings drawback.

“Settling claims for a cash penalty and modest concessions is usually much easier than changing how a company does business,” Mayer says. “Privacy litigation in the U.S. is often grounded in consumer deception claims. If a company simply updates its notice to users, that can be sufficient for legal compliance.”

The actual drawback for privateness followers is there are only a few legal guidelines about how firms deal with your knowledge within the United States. The authorities has come nearer than ever to passing a complete privateness legislation this yr, but it surely’s stalled in Congress, and it’s prone to get watered down if it ever passes.

For now, it’s enterprise as typical. Companies can principally do no matter they need together with your knowledge. They can’t mislead you about it, however they will make it fairly tough to find out the reality.