Android phone and tablet users have the option to activate or disable the Android Location service. This service can be very interesting if, for example, we use Google Maps or any other application to travel from one place to another or we want that if we miss our phone we can locate it on a map, but some users do not want to send this information for their privacy and deactivated the Location service, activating it only when strictly necessary.
However, a few days ago the news that Google has been collecting the location of Android users since early 2017 even if this option was disabled (You can read the whole news here), so actually users could do absolutely nothing to prevent this shipment data. What Google did is actually collect the information about antennas that give us telephone coverage
ng > (which are at least 3) and triangular our position… something like what was done earlier when in the movies we saw the police on duty say ‘locate the call!’. The point is that this information was then sent to Google, so they have had all the moves of Android users since early 2017… for what? God knows, they have said that to improve the speed with which messages are sent, which for any of us could be a valid excuse, but the lists of these things say it’s not clear how the identification of antennas can improve the speed of sending messages.
Lack of information
The problem is not that this has a more or less valid application., but there are many users who deactivate Google’s location service simply so that Google doesn’t have this data, so if you get them from somewhere else we are in the same… more, do so without being able to deactivate and, above all, without properly informing the user can be sanctioned by one of the global governments or regulators who always want to fight with Google, Apple or any other big company.
What about traffic data?
I’m gonna give you an example that I’m telling you about in my privacy talks. As you will remember some, Google Maps at first showed no traffic information. He then included this information based on statistics: ‘if I know that the M40 is put every day up to cars at 18: 30, because the frame is red for my users to know’. He then improved this and started using user reports, making the information more real.. but not many users report. And soon after they bought the company Waze, a great collaborative application p
to use as a browser and with a large community of users behind who actively report to get points, so they had more muuuuuchi reports in case of road incidents. So far, right? but once working together, Waze was updated with this great functionality (actual image of my phone during Waze’s installation):
I mean, you don’t need to report an incident anymore, just by taking Waze installed Google knows where you are… and if you go on the M40 or not… and if you stop all of a sudden in the middle of the M40 there’s nothing going to happen, but if the Waze user from 3 cars further there also stops and it turns out that another 5-car user from back also stops and the guy who goes on the line bus with his Waze to know how long it will take to get home also stop, because Google knows that there’s something happened and it makes it red. It can be a good method, it can be ingenious and it can be useful, but it is not possible to deactivate it, although on this occasion it is.
u are informed with this little screen, it is your decision whether to use Waze or not… I disinstalled it at the same time.
On this occasion with the triangulation of the antennas Google has said it is worth, who accept ship as an aquatic animal and that will ask the user for consent in addition to giving the opportunity to deactivate it (they have not said that they will stop doing so), so they will publish an update to fix this And… at this point, don’t you laugh? What Android phones will have access to that update? If you remember, a few weeks ago
-the -updates -of the -system -operational / «rel =» noopener «target =» _ blank «> we already commented that these updates only reach the most modern phones and not even in all cases. Moreover, how many users with modern phones will receive the update and have no idea that they can disable this? The thing is that with Google we can never feel 100% safe, not because we’re not (we’re also) but because they don’t give us that sense of security.