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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Google still faces class action lawsuit over Wallet payment service

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - A federal judge has denied Google Inc.’s motion to dismiss a putative class action lawsuit over its electronic payment service, Google Wallet.




 




Judge Beth Labson Freeman for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, allowed the lawsuit to proceed in an order Wednesday.




 




Plaintiff Alice Svenson filed the action in September 2013, alleging Google failed to honor the written privacy policies governing Wallet. Svenson used Wallet months earlier to buy a SMS MMS to email app for $1.77.




 




Google filed its motion to dismiss a year later for lack of standing and failure to state a claim. The federal court heard arguments in January.




 




“Viewing the claim as a whole, the court concludes that Svenson does allege a viable claim for breach of the implied covenant despite her stray, non-actionable allegations regarding Google’s failure to disclose,” Freeman wrote in the 18-page order.




 




Wallet allows users to purchase apps from Google’s Play Store.




 




Wallet accounts are governed by its terms of service, which incorporate its privacy policy, which, in turn, incorporates Google’s privacy policy.




 




More specifically, under Wallet’s privacy policy, Google may share a user’s personal information only as permitted under Google’s privacy policy; as necessary to process a user’s transaction and maintain a user’s account; or to complete a user’s registration for a service provided by a third party.




 




Under Google’s privacy policy, the company may share a user’s personal information only with the user’s consent; with domain administrators; for external processing; and for legal reasons.




 




Svenson alleges that prior to the filing of her lawsuit, Google’s “blanket practice” was to ignore these restrictions and, whenever a user purchased an app in the Play Store, to share the user’s personal information with the app vendor.




 




Such information included credit card information, purchase authorization, addresses, zip codes, names, phone numbers, email addresses and/or other information.




 




The class action alleges that Google’s sharing of such information with the app vendor was not necessary to the app purchases and was not otherwise authorized by the Google Wallet terms of service.




 




Google has until April 16 to file an answer to the order on its motion to dismiss.




 




The company, which has stopped sending information to vendors since Svenson’s lawsuit was filed, could not immediately be reached for comment on the order.




 




From Legal Newsline: Reach Jessica Karmasek by email at jessica@legalnewsline.com.


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