The email references a Google Plus settlement and directs the user to www.googleplusdatalitigation.com to redeem a settlement claim. The website refuses all connections at the time of writing.
All people I've talked to so far are highly skeptical of this email. The lawsuit does in fact exist. The purported settlement administration website is hosted on Amazon Web Services and shields its whois information using Amazon's product. I can't really tell more beyond that.
Can anyone advise as to whether or not this is a legitimate thing?
According to the privacy policy, the website is run by a company called Angeion, which according to a quick google search is a settlement administration company. Those handle complying with settlement agreements for other companies. Kinda like the one listed at the bottom of this webpage:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7999009/in-re-google-pl...
The addon "uMatrix" that I have on firefox confirms that the only parts of the website are from Angeion, the website listed, and the usual google analytics crap.
The adresses from the website and email are for what appear to be a real court office in the northern distric of California and the Angeion office in Philidelphia. I couldn't find anything on the listed phone number.
To me the parts that looked the skethiest to me were:
1) Asking to not call the california office
2) Saying that anyone who does not reply and opt-out will no longer be allowed to sue after the set date
Disclaimer I am not in any way a lawyer. The things that look sketchy to me could easily just be normal legal stuff that I disagree with (I'm staring really hard at the "you can't sue us if you don't notice this email in time). Asking to not call the California office could just be to prevent the legal office from being spammed by calls when there's a different place specifically set up for that.
Also, the information asked for on the website don't seem unusual given it's self proposed purpose. The information asked is very dependent on what you're trying to do, e.g. opting out requires an address and submiting a claim requires a claim ID.
https://9to5google.com/2020/08/04/many-receiving-settlement-...
But the max award is no more than $12, so I'm not going give them enough personal information to find out for sure.