A lawsuit filed in federal court accuses Google of invading people's privacy by tracking the whereabouts of smartphones users despite "location history" settings being turned off.
The suit filed Friday by a California man seeks unspecified damages along with class-action status to represent all US iPhone or Android smartphone users who turned off location history in order not to have their movements logged by Google.
"Google expressly represented to users of its operating system and apps that the activation of certain settings will prevent the tracking of users' geolocations," the lawsuit read. "This representation was false."
The suit accuses Google of violating privacy law, and cites a news report last week confirmed by university researchers.
Related: Google Caught Tracking Android User Location Data
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Quartz has found that Android phones have been tracking user locations and sending them to Google throughout 2017:
Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they're connected to the internet, a Quartz investigation has revealed.
Since the beginning of 2017, Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers—even when location services are disabled—and sending that data back to Google. The result is that Google, the unit of Alphabet behind Android, has access to data about individuals' locations and their movements that go far beyond a reasonable consumer expectation of privacy. Quartz observed the data collection occur and contacted Google, which confirmed the practice.
The cell tower addresses have been included in information sent to the system Google uses to manage push notifications and messages on Android phones for the past 11 months, according to a Google spokesperson. They were never used or stored, the spokesperson said, and the company is now taking steps to end the practice after being contacted by Quartz. By the end of November, the company said, Android phones will no longer send cell-tower location data to Google, at least as part of this particular service, which consumers cannot disable.
"In January of this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery," the Google spokesperson said in an email. "However, we never incorporated Cell ID into our network sync system, so that data was immediately discarded, and we updated it to no longer request Cell ID."
Also at TechCrunch and Engadget.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MrGuy on Tuesday August 21 2018, @06:51PM (3 children)
EULA
Google will argue that they clearly disclosed their policies in the EULA (with obvious air quotes around "clearly"). That by using Google's services, "opted in" to those policies. That they provided different controls that allow consumers to turn certain location tracking on or off for different purposes. That what they said technically was accurate, and that it's the responsibility of the consumer to read the fine print and understand what turning location services on/off actually meant. At best, they might express regret that their statements were "misinterpreted" by some consumers, and promise to add additional clarification.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @07:59PM (2 children)
EULAs like that should not be considered valid, since it's a race to the bottom where nearly all disservices and proprietary software spy on the user. As if proprietary software isn't already bad for denying the users their freedoms, they have to add secondary abuses as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)
Do we really want to nail Google?
Geez, this is the quickest way yet of nailing cheatin' spouses or finding the employee you thought was home sick was really somewhere else!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:47PM
Yes. "Do no evil" quickly changed to "Get away with as much evil as you can before the EU holds you accountable".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kalas on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:03PM (5 children)
Well it's certainly reassuring to see that randomly generated on the bottom of this page. Seems apt given how rapidly corporations have tricked the common man into giving away privacy one piece at a time simply for convenience.
Makes me wonder how long until our children don't even realize that once you could walk down the street without a camera recognizing your face and tagging your location/time, or having your phone report back to its masters exactly where you've been via GPS or WiFi networks in range.
It seems like no matter how egregrious the invasions get, people will keep not just accepting but paying for them as long as they can tweet easily or ask Alexa the weather instead of pulling up a browser.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:20PM (2 children)
How about how easily we will "agree" to EULA's, without even reading them!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheReaperD on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:46PM (1 child)
Please, like reading them is even realistically possible. Even if you have the law degree to understand it all, it would take 76 days/year [theatlantic.com] to read all the ones you're subjected to, and are expected to agree to. And, that's the point and why they should be completely unenforceable.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:54PM
Hell, if you pirate the damn thing, you don't have to agree to *anything*!
Just by paying for something, you tell them who to nail for accountability.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:31PM (1 child)
That's the thing, increasingly there isn't even an option to not be spied upon that doesn't involve moving to a shack in the middle of the woods like the Unibomber.
Trying to claim that there was consent when in most cases it's literally impossible to find out what the data is being used for is rather rich. It's certainly not informed consent and it's not necessarily even uninformed consent when there are few alternatives.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Wednesday August 22 2018, @04:42AM
And in court there will be some sort of tortured logic excusing what was done that amounts to 'because the campaign donation check was large and cleared'. I'd guess it'll be something like 'everyone knew they were lying and tracking you anyway, just like facebook so it doesn't matter if they wrote they wouldn't somewhere.'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:18AM (1 child)
Stop making excuses for google. They were engineered by the secret services and are owned by jews. Huge amounts of money were put into creating the evil were call google.
When google was found to record WiFi data from its street spy cars, people made excuses for it and tried to take attention away from it. Those are not regular people; they are agents paid to defend google on the internet and spread disinformation.
In a fair competition, google wouldn't stand a chance against other companies made by the people themselves. The system is rigged in their favor. Pay attention to where google came from. It will tell you where it is going.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 22 2018, @03:14PM
Nope. Most people don't give a shit. Even the people who tell you they care don't actually care. Consider all the arguing about Facebook that still mostly takes place on Facebook. Or people leave Facebook to use Instagram (also owned by Facebook). Or the complaints about Google that never even leave gmail's servers. Most peoples' primary concern is using the same stuff that everyone else is using. Their secondary concern is using something that's not going to crash or visibly fail. Security and privacy aren't even on the list because they're not obviously visible. People don't even care about the risks enough to be aware of what they are.
It's ultimately just the old "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" -- everyone wants to be "too big to fail". And they assume that as long as they keep buying Microsoft/Google/Amazon just like everyone else, then *somebody else* will be forced to bail them all out if there's any truly major problem. Because they don't want to be responsible for their technology. They don't want to be responsible for their *lives*. They want to mindlessly follow the strongest, most visible leader.