Google has also made legally binding commitments not to intentionally re-identify anonymized data as part of the court proceedings.
However, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) argues that Google’s proposed data sales would require both consumers and airline employees to place increased trust in the company’s privacy and data-protection practices.
Privacy advocates, including the AFA, point to Google’s history of alleged data-privacy violations as a reason for concern. In 2024, Google settled a class-action lawsuit filed by users who believed their browsing activity remained private while using Incognito mode. The company agreed to delete billions of records containing information about users’ private browsing sessions. In 2025, Google also agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to settle allegations that it unlawfully tracked and collected personal information, including geolocation data, search activity, and biometric information. In a press release, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said, “This is the highest recovery against Google in the nation of any attorney general who has enforced state privacy laws.”
Consumers must also trust Google’s third-party partners to fully remove or anonymize sensitive information. Flight attendants are concerned that Google’s data-sanitization process may primarily involve deleting identifiers from structured fields, such as names and email addresses linked to chat sessions. Even if the court approves the proposed terms and rejects the objection to the data sale, the AFA argues that this approach may be an inadequate way to protect confidential information.
Without additional safeguards, the AFA contends that Google’s agreement could exclude obvious consumer-identifying data while preserving records that employees would reasonably consider confidential.
“Nearly every consumer-facing category is designated as ‘not included,’ including customer profiles, loyalty and Free Spirit data, active email addresses, chat sessions, call recordings, phone numbers, website analytics, and Department of Transportation complaints,” the AFA wrote in its appeal. “Nearly every category under the heading ‘Team Members’ is designated as ‘included’: timecard information, employee data and employee records, employee travel records, corporate and crew training records, payroll records, employee tax forms, and employee documentation.”
Source: arstechnica.com