The group, Google you owe us, is led by former Which director Richard Lloyd is seeking compensation for some  5.4 million iPhone users. The group claims that Google bypassed privacy settings and that between June 2011 and February 2012 it placed cookies in iPhones, to fool the devices into releasing data from Safari, Apple's web browser.It is believed to be the first such mass legal claim of its kind in the UK and hearing is expected in the High Court next year.

'Not new'

A spokesman for Google told the BBC: ‘This is not new - we have defended similar cases before. We don't believe it has any merit and we will contest it.’