Unredacted documents in Arizona’s lawsuit against Google show
that company executives and engineers were aware that the search
giant had made it hard for smartphone users to keep location
information private, Insider reported.
Unredacted documents in Arizona’s lawsuit against Google show
that company executives and engineers were aware that the search
giant had made it hard for smartphone users to keep location
information private, Insider reported.
The documents suggest that Google collected location data even
after users had turned off location sharing, and made privacy
settings difficult for users to find. Insider also reports that
the documents show Google pressured phone manufacturers into
keeping privacy settings hidden, because the settings were
popular with users.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against
Google last May, alleging the company illegally tracked Android
users’ location without their consent, even if users had
disabled location tracking features. The lawsuit suggested
Google kept location tracking running in the background for some
features, and only stopped the practice when users disabled
system-level tracking.
The unredacted documents show one Google employee asked if there
was “no way to give a third party app your location and not
Google?” adding that it didn’t sound like something the company
would want revealed to the media, according to Insider.
Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in an email to The Verge
that Brnovich “and our competitors driving this lawsuit have
gone out of their way to mischaracterize our services. We have
always built privacy features into our products and provided
robust controls for location data. We look forward to setting
the record straight."
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/29/22460070/google-difficult- android-privacy-settings-arizona
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