The documents of a lawsuit in the state of Arizona against Google have exposed the Internet giant's dark strategy to collect the location of Android phones, even when users had disabled the location . Furthermore, they have revealed that the company deliberately hid some privacy settings to make them harder to find and even pressured manufacturers like LG to do the same in their OS layers.
The documents indicate that Google uses a variety of sources to detect the user's location such as Wi-Fi and GPS. In addition, they ensure that there is no way to share the location with a third-party application without first doing it with the Mountain View giant . As if this were not enough, the company continued to collect location data even when users disabled the location of an application.
According to Insider, Google tried to facilitate access to privacy settings on Android. However, when they detected that users were taking advantage of it so as not to be tracked, they decided to hide them to solve “the problem”. That is, to make some adjustments that were previously within reach, after the modification, it was necessary to navigate through various submenus . The company even pressured LG and other mobile phone manufacturers to hide the aforementioned settings.
If you want to prevent Google from tracking you, cheat it
Asif Islam / Shutterstock.com Jack Menzel, who was vice president of Google Maps, said in a statement that the only way to prevent Google from knowing a location is to intentionally mislead Android . How could this be done? According to the executive, indicating false information about where you live or work. Even a senior executive like Jen Chai, Senior Product Manager, has expressed that he did not know how the data collection system worked. Some Google employees were also obfuscated with Apple's privacy settings and assured that the company “is eating their lunch (stealing customers)” .
The lawsuit against Google has been filed by the Arizona attorney general. The official considers that Google “illegally tracked the location of Android users without their consent, even if the users had disabled the location tracking functions” . A Google spokesperson said the attorney general “appears to have mischaracterized our services.” He further added: “We have always built privacy features into our products and provide robust controls for location data.”
