Google Caught Being Sneaky With Location Data Collection

There’s a feature for that, although you might not really know it’s there.

Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you’ve been. This is a privacy loophole which is sometimes used by investigation agencies to track suspects. That includes Google, which allows its users the option to pause its “Location History” feature, supposedly preventing the company from tracking and storing your location. As part of the Web and App activities, Google usually collects your location data when you open the Maps app or even perform regular searches on Google that don’t even require your current location. This is leading many people to question how else Google may be tracking users.

The search giant is upfront about seeking permission for using location information, and application like Google Maps asks permission to access location for navigation.

At a time when people’s hackles over privacy have reached an all-time high following the recently exposed Cambridge Analytica affair involving Facebook, the ramifications could be considerable when you consider 2bn people worldwide carry Android devices.

Go to “Privacy” and then go to “Location” and then go to “App-level Permissions”.

It was found that another setting other than Location History would need to be turned off to stop the recordings from happening. Google has a lot of controls, menus, explanations, pop-ups, terms of service, and privacy policies to engage with across all of its products.

Follow the step-by-step procedure to stop Google from tracking you on your Apple iOS device. On Android devices, when you turn off Location History, the pop-up message doesn’t mention the fact that some location data will continue to be collected through the Web and App Activity feature.

The discovery of the warrant for data on a large number of individuals in this way prompted journalists to dig further into its use, and the revelation that the Raleigh Police Department had made similar warrant submissions for location data to Google 4 times since 2015. Now go to Settings. Under Settings Safari Search Engine, you can find other options like Bing or DuckDuckGo.

The FTC could also probe Google if its “privacy policy says one thing but the agency thinks an organization is doing something different”, Michelle Cohen, data privacy member at Ifrah Law, told Bloomberg Law.

While Google does let users disable its Location History tracking feature, it still needs to know where users are to provide them with the best experience possible. For example, launching the Maps app sends location data to Google that is recorded and stored.

On the page myactivity.google.com, look for any entry that has a location pin icon beside the word “details”. But the issue is though Google claims it has left to the user to choose of the Location History should be saved or not, the investigation by AP shows Google is possibly not revealing the whole truth in this. Added to this is Google searches, which too offer up search suggestions based on one’s location.