GOOGLE has been caught collecting its location data from Android devices, even when users specifically turned off location services, a new report has sensationally revealed.
Google tracks the whereabouts of your Android smartphone, regardless of whether or not users have disabled location services.
Android smartphones and tablets collect the addresses of cellular towers in the vicinity of the device, sending the information back to Google.
The US technology company gathers this location information even when the Android hardware does not have a SIM card inserted, a sensational investigation by Quartz has revealed.
Even Android devices which have been reset to factory default settings and apps – with location services disabled – sent nearby cell-tower addresses to Google, Quartz adds.
Smartphones need the ability to track your location in order to provide directions within apps like Google Maps, Facebook, Waze, and more.
However, some users choose not to share their location data with Google for privacy reasons.
According to the findings from Quartz, Google has been collecting the addresses of telephone masts that are “pinged” by smartphones in the local area since January 2017.
The practice raises a number of concerns for the two billion people currently using Android-powered devices.
Software engineer Bill Budington, who works for digital privacy campaign group Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Quartz: “It has pretty concerning implications.
“You can kind of envision any number of circumstances where that could be extremely sensitive information that puts a person at risk.”
Google says it does not use the location data it collects using these cell towers.
However, Quartz says the California-based company does allow advertisers to target consumers using location data, which has obvious commercial value.
Location tracking enables Goole to determine, for example, whether an individual with an Android phone or with Google apps has visited a specific high street store.
This could be used to target online advertising based around that store, or the products it sells.
Google told Quartz it would end the practice by the end of the month.
A spokesperson for the company said: “In January of this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery.
“However, we never incorporated Cell ID into our network sync system, so that data was immediately discarded, and we updated it to no longer request Cell ID.”