Alphabet sued over privacy concerns

Alphabet stock (GOOGL.US) fell over 4.0% after Texas and the District of Columbia sued the parent company of Google over what they called deceptive location tracking practices that invade users’ privacy. 

Two other state attorneys general plan to file lawsuits as well as part of a bipartisan effort to hold Google accountable over privacy, Washington, DC Attorney General Karl Racine’s office said in a statement.

According to the attorney, Google deceived users from at least 2014 to 2019 by leading them to believe that turning off location history settings would make the service stop tracking their locations. “Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,”  Racine said.

“The truth is that contrary to Google’s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data. Google’s bold misrepresentations are a clear violation of consumers’ privacy,” the statement said.

A spokesperson for Google, Jose Castaneda, said the “attorneys general are bringing a case based on inaccurate claims and outdated assertions about our settings. We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We will vigorously defend ourselves and set the record straight.”

Alphabet (GOOGL.US) stock took a hit in recent days, as widespread selloff in the broader market and lawsuits weighed on investors sentiment. Yesterday the price broke below the major support zone around $2670 which is marked by the lower limit of the 1:1 structure, previous price reactions and 200 SMA (red line). Stock launched today's session with a bearish price gap and buyers failed to break above local resistance at $2560 which is marked with 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of the upward move launched in March 2020. Later in the session stock resumed its downward move and if current sentiment prevails, downward correction may deepen further towards support at $2255 which coincides with 38.2% Fibonacci retracement. Source: xStation5