An investigation carried out by the Associated Press has found that Google is in fact storing Android and iPhone users\u2019 location data even when they have chosen privacy settings to prevent the company from doing so.<\/p>\n
Google claims that if you turn off the \u2018Location History\u2019 setting on your device, the company will not be able to store information about where you have been. The company states on its support page, that you can turn off Location History \u201cat any time\u201d<\/em> and that, with the setting turned off, \u201cthe places you go are no longer stored.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not true, the AP report says, because some Google apps continue to store time-stamped location data even when the \u2018Location History\u2019 setting is switched off \u2013 without asking for permission.<\/p>\n Some of the examples given by the AP include the Google Maps app, which takes a snapshot of your location as soon as you open it and even completely unrelated searches like \u201cchocolate chip cookies\u201d<\/em> which \u201cpinpoint your precise latitude and longitude\u201d<\/em> and save it to your Google account.<\/p>\n The AP looked into the issue after K. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley, blogged about how her Android device had prompted her to rate a recent shopping trip to Kohl\u2019s even though her location history had been turned off.<\/p>\n Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist, told the AP that Google\u2019s privacy settings should be made clearer. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to allow users to turn off something called \u2018Location History,\u2019 then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,\u201d<\/em> he said. \u201cThat seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Google, however, says it has been clear. A spokesperson for the company said that it provides \u201cclear descriptions\u201d<\/em> of all the Google tools that people use which may record users\u2019 locations.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n To prevent Google from saving location data from all of those tools, the company said users can turn off a setting called \u2018Web and App Activity\u2019 \u2013 but since this setting is turned on by default, many people don\u2019t know about it and assume that when they turn \u2018Location History\u2019 off, it will be off across all of their apps.<\/p>\n Users can delete stored location markers by hand, but each one has to be selected and deleted individually \u2013 unless you want to delete all of your stored activity \u2013 making it a time-consuming process.<\/p>\n Google does offer a less misleading description of how its location storing works but only in a popup window if you select to \u2018pause\u2019 \u2018Location History\u2019 on your Google account web page, where it states that some location data may still be saved as part of your activity on other Google apps.<\/p>\n Peter Lenz, a senior geospatial analyst at advertising technology company Dstillery said that Google\u2019s obsession with tracking user locations is all to do with advertising revenue. \u201cThey build advertising information out of data,\u201d<\/em> he said. \u201cMore data for them presumably means more profit.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The AP\u2019s findings were confirmed by computer-science researchers at Princeton University.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you\u2019ve ever suspected that Google is watching your every move even when you explicitly tell it not to, a new investigation has vindicated your suspicions by proving just that. An investigation carried out by the Associated Press has found that Google is in fact storing Android and iPhone users\u2019 location data even when they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":368671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-373222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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