United Kingdom, Sept. 4 -- Google has been ordered by a US federal court to pay $425 million (£316.3 million) in damages after being found to have collected user data even when account holders had switched off tracking features.

The verdict followed a class action lawsuit filed in July 2020 on behalf of about 98 million users and covering 174 million devices.

The plaintiffs alleged the company's Web and App Activity setting misled customers, allowing Google to continue collecting, saving and using data from mobile devices despite assurances that privacy was being protected.

They had been seeking more than $31 billion in damages.

A Google spokesperson told the BBC: "This decision misunderstands how our products work, and we will a...