Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card?
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.
https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio…
"Very reminiscent of the collection of Wi-Fi network data by Google Street View in 2010. That was blamed on a rogue engineer, even though the system had to be approved by a manager," he writes.
Indeed, Google advanced the theory that it was the work of a lone gunman: one rogue slurper, acting alone. The FCC demolished the theory. Google had intercepted the data "for business purposes", privacy group EPIC concluded.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/22/permissionless_data…
The "mistake" where a "rogue engineer" started collecting the most important data of all to serve advertising happens on ALL Android devices meaning phones, tablets, TVs, set top boxes etc.
Do you think they'll be deleting the data considering they neglected to inform you they were collecting it in the first place?
anonymous ? or tied to google account ?