Google is said to have made it unnecessarily difficult for smartphone users to find the privacy settings on the smartphone. In addition, the pressure was put on cell phone manufacturers to hide the corresponding setting options.
This emerges from a lawsuit that the group is currently facing in Arizona. The details come from unredacted documents in the lawsuit against the company. The documents are supposed to show that executives and engineers at the company knew that Google made it difficult for smartphone users to keep location data private, reports BusinessInsider.
The point is that Google collected location data even if users had turned off location sharing. The location approval alone was not effective and further data protection settings were difficult for users to find. BusinessInsider also reports that the documents show that Google pressured phone manufacturers to keep these privacy settings well hidden.
The Arizona Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Google last May alleging that the company was illegally tracking the location of Android users without their consent, even if the users turned off location tracking. That had quickly come true, only the background to it was missing.
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The lawsuit states that Google ran location tracking in the background for some features and only stopped that practice when users turned off system-level tracking. However, that was a thorn in the side of the company. The unredacted documents show that a Google employee asked if there was “no way to let a third-party app know your location and not Google,” adding that it wouldn’t sound like something the company wants it gets passed on to the media, writes BusinessInsider.
There is already a reaction to the report. Google spokesman José Castañeda stated in an email to The Verge that the prosecutor “and our competitors who are driving this lawsuit have taken the trouble to misrepresent our services. We have always built privacy features into our products and have robust.” Location data controls provided. We look forward to fixing this. “
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