Google doesn’t listen when you ask it not to track location over time. Critics believe it’s done to boost advertising revenue.
Google has become clingy to a point where it won’t stop tracking your movements even when you explicitly ask it not to. According to an investigation by the Associated Press (AP), many Google services on iPhones and Android devices store the user’s location data even when the privacy setting to allow this has been turned off.
According to a recently published report by the Associated Press, AP’s findings were verified by computer science researchers at Princeton University. On the face of it, it seems Google is candid about asking permission to use the user’s location information when launching Google Maps for the first time. If the user agrees to let the app record location over time, Maps will show that history to the user in the ‘Timeline’ section. The app even lets the user ‘pause’ this setting so they can have it back on after a certain period of time. Ideally, this should stop Google from tracking one’s location once paused. In fact, Google’s support page on the matter says, “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”
Here’s the problem: Google doesn’t stop tracking location even when Location History is paused. Google apps automatically save time-stamped location data without asking. According to AP’s investigation, Google stores this even when it’s seemingly unnecessary, like while searching for topics like “chocolate chip cookies” and “kids science kits”. The same happens when weather information is retrieved or when Maps is simply opened. This privacy issue reportedly affects about two billion Android device-users and hundreds of millions of iPhone users who use Google for maps or searches.
The post Google follows you wherever you go, even if you say no appeared first on Statii News.
source http://news.statii.co.uk/google-follows-you-wherever-you-go-even-if-you-say-no/
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