Posted By: technopediasite
Google services on Android
devices and iPhones store your location data even if you've used a privacy
setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so.
Google wants to know where
you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it
not to. An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on
Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used a
privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so.
Computer-science researchers
at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP‘s request.
For the most part, Google is
upfront about asking permission to use your location information. An app like
Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for
navigating. If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps
will display that history for you in a “timeline” that maps out your daily
movements.
Storing your minute-by-minute
travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the
location of suspects — such as a warrant that police in Raleigh, North
Carolina, served on Google last year to find devices near a murder scene. So
the company lets you “pause” a setting called Location History.
Google says that will
prevent the company from remembering where you’ve been. Google’s support page
on the subject states: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With
Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”
That isn’t true. Even with
Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped
location data without asking. (It’s possible, although laborious, to delete it
.)
For example, Google stores a
snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily
weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some
searches that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,”
or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate
to the square foot — and save it to your Google account.
The privacy issue affects
some two billion users of devices that run Google’s Android operating software
and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps
or search.
Storing location data in
violation of a user’s preferences is wrong, said Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer
scientist and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications
Commission’s enforcement bureau. A researcher from Mayer’s lab confirmed the
AP’s findings on multiple Android devices; the AP conducted its own tests on
several iPhones that found the same behavior.
“If you’re going to allow
users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places
where you maintain location history should be turned off,” Mayer said. “That
seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.”
Google says it is being
perfectly clear.
“There are a number of
different ways that Google may use location to improve people’s experience,
including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level
Location Services,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the AP. “We
provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can
turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.”
Google’s explanation did not
convince several lawmakers.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia
told the AP it is “frustratingly common” for technology companies “to have
corporate practices that diverge wildly from the totally reasonable expectations
of their users,” and urged policies that would give users more control of their
data. Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey called for “comprehensive consumer
privacy and data security legislation” in the wake of the AP report.
To stop Google from saving
these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting,
one that does not specifically reference location information. Called “Web and
App Activity” and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information
from Google apps and websites to your Google account.
When paused, it will prevent
activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving “Web &
App Activity” on and turning “Location History” off only prevents Google from
adding your movements to the “timeline,” its visualization of your daily
travels. It does not stop Google’s collection of other location markers.
You can delete these
location markers by hand, but it’s a painstaking process since you have to
select them individually, unless you want to delete all of your stored
activity.
You can see the stored
location markers on a page in your Google account at myactivity.google.com,
although they’re typically scattered under several different headers, many of
which are unrelated to location.
To demonstrate how powerful
these other markers can be, the AP created a visual map of the movements of
Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with
Location history off, and shared a record of his Google account.
The map includes Acar’s
train commute on two trips to New York and visits to The High Line park,
Chelsea Market, Hell’s Kitchen, Central Park and Harlem. To protect his
privacy, The AP didn’t plot the most telling and frequent marker — his home
address.
Huge tech companies are
under increasing scrutiny over their data practices, following a series of
privacy scandals at Facebook and new data-privacy rules recently adopted by the
European Union. Last year, the business news site Quartz found that Google was
tracking Android users by collecting the addresses of nearby cellphone towers
even if all location services were off. Google changed the practice and
insisted it never recorded the data anyway.
Critics say Google’s
insistence on tracking its users’ locations stems from its drive to boost
advertising revenue.
“They build advertising
information out of data,” said Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial analyst at
Dstillery, a rival advertising technology company. “More data for them
presumably means more profit.”
The AP learned of the issue
from K. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who studies the
commuting patterns of volunteers in order to help urban planners. She noticed
that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl’s, even
though she had turned Location History off.
“So how did Google Maps know where I was?”
Google offers a more
accurate description of how Location History actually works in a place you’d
only see if you turn it off — a popup that appears when you “pause” Location
History on your Google account webpage . There the company notes that “some
location data may be saved as part of your activity on other Google services,
like Search and Maps.”
Google offers additional
information in a popup that appears if you re-activate the “Web & App
Activity” setting — an uncommon action for many users, since this setting is on
by default. That popup states that, when active, the setting “saves the things
you do on Google sites, apps, and services … and associated information, like
location.”
Warnings when you’re about
to turn Location History off via Android and iPhone device settings are more
difficult to interpret. On Android, the popup explains that “places you go with
your devices will stop being added to your Location History map.” On the
iPhone, it simply reads, “None of your Google apps will be able to store
location data in Location History.”
The iPhone text is
technically true if potentially misleading. With Location History off, Google
Maps and other apps store your whereabouts in a section of your account called
“My Activity,” not “Location History.”
The company is pushing
further into such location-aware tracking to drive ad revenue, which rose 20
percent last year to $95.4 billion. At a Google Marketing Live summit in July,
Google executives unveiled a new tool called “local campaigns” that dynamically
uses ads to boost in-person store visits. It says it can measure how well a
campaign drove foot traffic with data pulled from Google users’ location
histories.
Google also says location
records stored in My Activity are used to target ads. Ad buyers can target ads
to specific locations — say, a mile radius around a particular landmark — and
typically have to pay more to reach this narrower audience.
While disabling “Web &
App Activity” will stop Google from storing location markers, it also prevents
Google from storing information generated by searches and other activity. That
can limit the effectiveness of the Google Assistant, the company’s digital
concierge.
Sean O’Brien, a Yale Privacy
Lab researcher with whom the AP shared its findings, said it is “disingenuous”
for Google to continuously record these locations even when users disable
Location History. “To me, it’s something people should know,” he said.
HOW
TO STOP IT
You thought Google stopped
tracking your location once you turned off Location History in your account
settings, you were wrong. According to an AP investigation published Monday,
even if you disable Location History, the search giant still tracks you every time
you open Google Maps, get certain automatic weather updates, or search for
things in your browser. There's a way to stop it—but it takes some digging.
The problem affects anyone
with an Android phone and iPhone users running Google Maps on their devices,
according to the AP report, which researchers at Princeton University verified.
That's more than two billion people.
The Google support page for
managing and deleting your Location History says that once you turn it off,
"the places you go are no longer stored. When you turn off Location
History for your Google Account, it's off for all devices associated with that
Google Account." The AP's investigation found that's not true. In fact,
turning off your Location History only stops Google from creating a timeline of
your location that you can view. Some apps will still track you and store
time-stamped location data from your devices.
More specifically, the AP
was able to track Princeton researcher Gunes Acar's home address, as well as
his daily activities, using just Google Web & App activity, which he had
shared with the news agency.
"If Google is
representing to its users that they can turn off or pause location tracking but
it's nevertheless tracking their location, that seems like textbook deception
to me," says Alan Butler, senior council at the Electronic Privacy Information
Center.
To actually turn off
location tracking, Google says you have to navigate to a setting buried deep in
your Google Account called Web & App Activity, which is set by default to
share your information, including not just location but IP address and more.
Finding that setting isn't easy. At all.
Sign in to your Google
account on a browser on iOS or your desktop, or through the Android settings
menu. In the browser, access your account settings by finding Google Account in
the dropdown in the upper right-hand corner, then head to Personal Info &
Privacy, choose Go to My Activity, then in the left-hand nav click Activity
Controls. Once there you'll see the setting called Web & App Activity,
which you can toggle off.
On your Android phone, go
from Google settings to Google Account, then tap on Data & personalization.
You'll find Web & App Activity there.
Google further buries the
notion that Web & App Activity has anything to do with location. In fact,
the setting sits right above the Location History option, suggesting at a
glance that the two things are quite distinct. And Google's vanilla description
of Web & App Activity is that it "Saves your activity on Google sites
and apps to give you faster searches, better recommendations, and more
personalized experiences in Maps, Search, and other Google services." From
there, you have to tap Learn more, then scroll to What's saved as Web & App
Activity, and tap again on Info about your searches & more before Google
says anything about location whatsoever.
To stop that tracking, toggle the blue Web & App Activity slider to
off. Google will then give you a popup warning: "Pausing Web & App
Activity may limit or disable more personalized experiences across Google
services. For example, you may stop seeing more relevant search results or recommendations
about places you care about. Even when this setting is paused,
Google may temporarily use information from recent searches in order to improve
the quality of the active search session."
Google told the AP that it
provides "clear descriptions of these tools," but it takes eight taps
on an Android phone—if you know exactly where you're going—to even access that
description to begin with. As the AP notes, most people who explicitly turned
off their Location History tracking.
Many other privacy conscious
publications have advised people to do, would have assumed they had already
taken all steps necessary to keep their location private.
As well they should. Google
itself offers at least three support pages on location: Manage or delete your
Location History, Turn location on or off for your Android device, and Manage
location settings for Android apps. None of these makes any mention of Web
& App Activity.
"we make sure Location
History users know that when they disable the product, we continue to use
location to improve the Google experience when they do things like perform a
Google search or use Google for driving directions." This apparently
refers to a warning that appears if you turn off Location History, which says
that it "does not affect other location services on your device."
However, nowhere in that popup does it indicate that you can turn off other
forms of location tracking by pausing Web & App Activity.
"Tracking people
without their consent and without proper controls in place is creepy and
wrong," wrote UC Berkeley graduate researcher K. Shankari in a blog post
that first alerted the AP to the problem.
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