According to the officials of Google, it agreed to pay $13 million as plenty for the legal case of Street View which claimed that the firm collected the private information of people using it project of Street View.

If the judge approved the agreement, it would solve a lawsuit of 2010, over the privacy violations through the Street View program. It is about a decade to end that the company is facing the legal challenges for its particular application.

Although, many experts were expecting that Google may cost billions of dollars for that case because petitioners claimed that the collection of private data is an act of breaking federal wiretapping laws.  However, there is no financial relief in the agreement for class members.

What is the Street View Feature?

It is a feature that allows the users to view the panoramic images of places around the globe and, google introduced it in 2007. The legal action against the Google’s projects started when personal data of numerous people gathered, and they take legal action against Google. Afterward, the tech giant confessed that the cars took the photos of neighborhoods for the project of Street View. Furthermore, it also collected passwords, emails, and other personal information from the Wi-Fi networks in over thirty countries.

Initial Stance of Google and Court Verdict in the case

In the start, Google refused the allegations and termed the collection of data as a company’s mistake. On the other side, according to the documents of Google, the engineers of Google built software and embedded it into Street View vehicles to intercept the information intentionally from 2007 to 2010.

Over the same matter, Google settled a lawsuit in 2013 brought by 38 countries for $7 million. The settlement consists that the firm agreed to trash the collected information through Street View program and it starts a campaign to guide people how they protect their data from Wifi snooping. Formerly, the organization agreed to halt the network data collection through vehicles.

The currently planned settlement of Google also consists of a similar agreement. Google should destroy all the remaining collected data through Street View and should not again gather information via Street View from user’s Wi-Fi networks except with consent. Moreover, Goggle bound to develop the web pages and video tutorials to teach the people how they can secure their data of wireless.

According to the critic, it is not clear why the deleting of gathering information and halting the project term is present in the agreement as Google already responsible for doing the same actions under the agreement of 2013. Whereas, the company refused to do any type of comment on the overall proposed settlement.

While giving an interview to the international news agency, the president of research firm ‘Electronic Privacy Information Center,’ Marc Rotenberg said that it is strange that Google agrees to end this exercise and make the announcement of public service six years after the previous agreement when people are assuming that they are already doing it.

Who will get monetary relief in the agreement?

Twenty-two original petitioners of the lawsuit will get the monetary relief, whereas additional class members will not take that relief while the eight organizations devoted to consumer protection and data privacy will receive the remaining amount of the settlement.

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