Yahoo Finance Google faces second round in court after claimants lodge appeal in privacy battle
A group of consumers who sued Google over allegedly collecting private information for advertising have filed an appeal after their claim was struck out by the High Court.
The tech giant was accused of unlawfully collecting the personal information of over 4.4 million iPhone users in the UK by bypassing the default privacy settings on the Apple device between June 2011 and February 2012.
Mr Justice Warby threw out the case last month, claiming that defendants had not been able to prove the basis for their compensation claim against Google.
The claim was initially filed by Richard Lloyd, the former director of consumer rights watchdog Which?, who set up a consumer group to take the claim forward in court.
The group, backed by litigation funder Therium, is seeking to represent the four million Britons that it claims were impacted by the so-called "Safari Workaround".
They told the court that the data collected by Google included identifiers such as race, physical and mental health, sexuality, social class and location data.
Justice Warby found against the claimants after determining that they were unable to prove individuals in the claimant group had the same interest in the claim.
The class action group, called "Google You Owe Us", said: "We are very pleased to announce that Richard Lloyd and Google You Owe Us have appealed October's judgment. The official appeal has been filed with the Court of Appeal."
The claim group said that Google would be forced to pay £750 to each user affected if their case were successful, bringing compensation up to £3.3bn.
At the time of launching the claim, Mr Lloyd said he wanted to “send a strong message” to Google and other tech giants in Silicon Valley.
A spokesman for Google said: "The privacy and security of our users is extremely important to us. The Courts have already dismissed this case, finding it to be without merit."
