Google has been spying on the locations of the Android Users: Report reveals

A newly published report revealed that Google Inc. has been spying on the locations of the Android Users, even when the user thinks that the location data is being kept private or secret.

According to the report, the company [Google] has been able to collect the data about the user’s location because android mobiles have the ability to collect the location details from the network’s tower. The collected data sent back to the Google’s servers, which may be an invasion of privacy.

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Google Inc. has said – while confirming the practice—that it was ending the practice by the end of the month.

Google’s spokesperson said, that “In January of the current year, we [company] starts looking into Cell ID codes as an additional signal to improve the performance and speed of the message delivery system. However, we had never integrated the user’s Cell ID data into our network sync system, so that the collected data was immediately destroyed, and we updated it to no longer request Cell ID.”

Further he added, “To ensure the notifications and messages are received quickly, the modern Android devices use a network sync system that requires the use of Mobile Country Codes (MCC) and Mobile Network Codes (MNC).”

Report claimed, this practice was not used to enhance the ad-serving system, but rather to improve what Google calls its “heartbeat system,” which ensures that the Android Phones remain connected and users get their messages properly and quickly.

Eric Feinberg, representative of GIPEC-Cyber Intelligence Company, believes that this Google’s practice is a huge risk for the people whose location needs to be hidden for a reason. I think there might a possibility of putting some people at risk, especially the people in the military and government jobs, because they may not want anyone to know about their location due to the sensitivity of their jobs.