Five public interest groups sent a letter opposing...
Five public interest groups sent a letter opposing a proposed settlement of the $8.5 million class action suit against Google for privacy violations, said Consumer Watchdog and the Electronic Privacy Information Center in a press release Thursday (http://prn.to/1aw9tGx). The letter…
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to Justice Edward Davila said there are “three obvious deficiencies” in the proposal: “(1) it fails to require Google to make any substantive changes to its business practices; (2) it provides no monetary relief to the class; and (3) the proposed cy pres allocations do not meet the Ninth Circuit’s requirements for alignment with the interests of class members.” Cy pres awards are “next best” way of distributing settlement funds, but the recipients “should further the interests of the class,” said the companies. Only one of the organizations that would receive cy pres funds “has the protection of privacy as a mission and is aligned with the interests of class members,” the groups wrote in the letter. The suit charges that Google shared search queries with third parties without the searchers’ knowledge or getting their permission to do so, said the companies. “Bad settlements seriously undermine the effectiveness of class action suits in protecting consumers against corporate wrongdoing,” said John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog director-privacy project. “They do nothing but fatten the pockets of the attorneys."