Canadian lawyers file lawsuit against Google for using users' personal info for profits

Tech giant Google is under massive heat in Canada after the lawyers of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec filed separate class-action suits against it for 'unlawfully collecting profits from its user's personal information.'

The suit against Google and its parent company Alphabet alleges that the company collects its user's personal information from their devices without their consent to 'build profiles' of nearly every internet user in Canada, IT World Canada reported. It also alleges that it uses this data and data collected through other mediums such as Google Services, Google Ads, and Google Analytics to make 'unlawful profits'.

“There is no reason Canadians should tolerate what we say is extensive surveillance of their daily online activities, especially because Canada has laws specifically intended to protect them from such actions,” said Luciana Brasil, from Branch MacMaster LLP in a press release.

The data collected by Google’s services, Google Ads and Analytics, is actively used to track and trespass the user's preferences and contents including sending code to their computers, tablets, or smartphones when they visit these sites or services. 

Google does not stop there, the suit alleges that even the data of even those users which have no relations with Google's services such as the Chrome browser or Gmail is collected by the company via the sites that either allow or use Google Analytics or Google Ads. According to the press release, nearly 50 per cent of global websites have Google’s services as well as Google Ads and Analytics, installed, therefore personal information of a user who does not engage in Google services is also ultimately collected via these sites. 

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“So my computer is being told to do something by somebody with whom I have had no relationship without my knowledge and without any opportunity to give consent. That to me is such a clear case," said Luciana Brasil to IT World Canada.

All three suits are filed on the grounds of the alleged privacy violations of their respective provincial laws as well as Canada's federal privacy law. It is still undecided whether the three suits would be merged together at a later stage.

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