SAN JOSE - Google has lost a key ruling in a class action lawsuit alleging it illegally obtained minors' personal information through its Google Play games.
California federal judge P. Casey Pitts on June 18 denied the company's motion to dismiss in its entirety, leaving lawyers at The Lexington Law Group and Silver Golub & Teitell to pursue their case.
The plaintiffs allege in their class action that through apps directed at children, the defendants knowingly violated the privacy of millions of minors. They claim the defendants targeted children with "highly lucrative behavioral advertising" without well-established privacy protections.
The plaintiffs allege Google's "Designed for Families" (DFF) on the Google Play Store falsely represented that the apps complied with data collection laws that would require parental consent.
Specifically, the plaintiffs claim Google "surreptitiously exfiltrated" the personal information of children under age 13 who played its Android App games such as "Fun Kid Racing, Monster Truck Racing and GummyBear and Friends Speed Racing" in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
Google made several arguments for dismissal, one of which was that state law claims were barred by COPPA, while plaintiffs said that isn't the case because the company had actual knowledge of the alleged violations.
"Assuming that Google reviewed every app for compliance with COPPA before accepting it into the DFF program, plaintiffs sufficiently allege that Google had actual knowledge that certain apps were being mischaracterized as for 'mixed audiences' when they were in fact child-directed."
The suit claims Google was told by researchers at Berkeley that more than 2,600 DFF apps were incorrectly listed as for "mixed audiences" when they were actually primarily directed at children.
"The researchers noted that developers were miscategorizing their apps and then engaging in defective age-gating, thereby collecting data from minors under the age of 13 in violation of COPPA," Pitts wrote.
Another rejected argument was that the plaintiff's claim was time-barred. The collection of info through AdMob SDK in children's app was discovered in 2018, the plaintiffs say, but not fixed until Dec. 10, 2021.
It was then that Google reached a settlement with the New Mexico Attorney General's Office. It required a list of changes on Google's part and sent $5.5 million to the state, from which $1.65 was paid to private lawyers who represented New Mexico. It was part of a global settlement that included app developer Tiny Lab Productions.
The class action was filed less than two years later, on June 6, 2023. Tiny Lab hadn't appeared in Google Play since 2018.
"(T)he complaint alleges that minors were tracked through various Android apps in Google's DFF program, not just Tiny Lab's apps," Pitts wrote.
"The fact that Tiny Lab was removed from the Google Play Store in 2018 therefore does not on its own render plaintiffs' claims time-barred. Further, plaintiffs allege that unlawful tracking continued to occur through 2021 on the devices of children who had downloaded Tiny Lab apps before its 2018 removal... because the apps were not deleted from their devices."