This was bound to happen sooner or later as android smartphones have reportedly been gathering users’ location data and sending it to Google even when the location services were turned off and there was no SIM card in the device.
This might sound straight out of a Jason Bourne movie but this is true and has been verified by google itself. 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.
The tech giant has reportedly confirmed the practice of gathering location data.
“In January this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery,” a Google spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby mobile towers — even when location services are disabled — and sending that data back to Google.
Security
This makes search engine giant and the unit of Alphabet behind Android have access to a huge amount of data that invades their privacy policy and might put a lot of users under privacy stress like that wasn’t enough already.
Users cannot opt out of this even when their devices are factory reset.
In October, several Google Home Mini devices reportedly malfunctioned and recorded audio in the background in the owners’ homes, instead of only waking up when a specific trigger word was used.
It’s no secret that Google keeps track of your phone’s location — many of the apps we use such as UBER or Maps itself wouldn’t work as well without location services turned on.
If you’re concerned about your privacy, you can tell your Android phone to remove your location history from your Google Maps Timeline