A £3billion mass legal action against Google over claims that it secretly tracked millions of iPhone users’ internet activity has today been blocked by the Supreme Court.
The legal battle centred on allegations that the technology giant secretly tracked the data of millions of iPhone users in England and Wales.
The class action was brought forward by Richard Lloyd - a former director of consumer group Which? who estimated as many as four million iPhone customers were owed £750 each for the breach of privacy.
Lloyd alleged that Google gathered information on iPhone users who used the Safari web browser between 2011 and 2012 and used it for advertising purposes.
Almost a decade ago Google was caught secretly placing an advertising tracking cookie on Safari web browsers on iPhone, Mac and iPad devices.
The workaround was discovered by Jonathan Mayer, then a graduate researcher at Stanford University.
At the time, Google argued that the data collection was accidental and insisted that it did not mean for the feature to bypass the Safari browser's default security settings.
But Lloyd claimed the technology giant collected data on their health, race, ethnicity, sexuality and political affiliations.
The allegations went on to claim that this data was then used to group people into categories for advertising purposes - although Google has always insisted that no information was shared to third parties.
Lloyd, who is backed by campaign group Google You Owe Us, had been hoping for a £1billion and £3billion in compensation for alleged breaches of the Data Protection Act.
The case was initially dismissed by the High Court, which ruled it was difficult to calculate how many people had been affected or whether they had suffered losses.
The decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2019, whereupon Google appealed and the case was escalated to the Supreme Court.
Antony White QC previously said claims had also been launched against Facebook and YouTube and a ruling in Lloyd's favour would 'open the floodgates' to further claims.
A Google spokesperson said: “This claim was related to events that took place a decade ago and that we addressed at the time. People want to know that they are safe and secure online, which is why for years we've focused on building products and infrastructure that respect and protect people's privacy.”
