Category: Google|Jun 2, 2021 | Author: Admin

Google on the dock: "Problem" that users find the privacy settings

• google
• android
• privacy
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Documents related to a lawsuit in Arizona reveal that Google continued to collect location data even from users who turned off the feature; Google made it difficult to find the privacy settings, they even forced phone manufacturers to hide certain settings from users.

Conscious practice
Google's own executives and employees were fully aware of how difficult the company makes it for smartphone users to keep their location data private. The collection is so extensive that it confuses not only users but also high-level employees.

 

Virtually impossible
Former Google Maps Vice President Jack Menzel said it was virtually impossible for users to hide home and work.

 

Jen Chai, senior product manager with responsibility for position data, did not know how the company's complex network of privacy settings interacted.

 

Illegal activity
The information appears in documents presented in a lawsuit in which Google is accused of illegally collecting location data also from smartphone users who have opted out.

 

The judge demanded that the documents in the public interest be presented unedited. The unedited documents paint a detailed picture of how Google collects and hides its data collection techniques. Location data is even collected from WiFi and third-party apps not affiliated with Google.

 

Third-party apps gossip

 

So there is no way to give a third party app access to your location without Google getting it too? This does not sound like something we want on the front page of the New York Times.

 

Digs down the privacy settings
When Google tested options that made it easier to find the privacy settings in Android, it was exploited by users, which Google saw as a "problem".

 

To solve the "problem", Google dug these settings back deep into the menus.

 

Google also tried to get smartphone makers to hide settings "through active suppression or omission of facts".

 

Google employees seemed to acknowledge that users were frustrated by the company's aggressive data collection.

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