Colorado, along with 39 other states, reached a nearly $400 million settlement with Google over its location tracking practices, Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Monday. 

The settlement – of which $8.3 milion will go to Colorado – is the largest multi-state attorney general privacy settlement in American history, Weiser’s office said. 

“Google told consumers they could stop sharing their location information if they disabled Location History on their phones. Contrary to its promise to consumers, the company continued to separately track and collect location data when users interacted with products like Google Maps and Search through the Web & App Activity setting, and then used this illegally harvested personal data to sell ads,” Weiser said in a news release. “By misleading consumers into believing they could control their location data and privacy, Google violated our consumer protection laws. Today, we are holding them accountable.”

Location data, a key part of Google’s digital advertising business, is among the most sensitive and valuable personal information that Google collects, according to Weiser’s office. Even a limited amount can expose a person’s identity and routines, which can be used to infer personal details, the office said.  

Weiser’s office said the attorneys general launched the investigation following a 2018 Associated Press article about how Google “records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.”

The attorneys general said they found Google violated state consumer protection laws by misleading consumers about its location tracking practices since at least 2014.

Weiser said the settlement requires Google to be more transparent about its practices. Google, for example, must show additional information whenever users turn a location-related account setting on or off, and the company must also provide users detailed information about the types of location data that Google collects.