Google still keeps location data even though the user has disabled (turn off) its location track record (location history). At least according to the results of the Associated Press (AP) investigation, in collaboration with the Princeton University research team, which was released on August 15, 2018.
Following the investigation, new findings emerged from the results of Professor Douglas Schmidt’s research from Vanderbult University. He found the Android smartphone absorbs personal data of users 10 times more than the iPhone.
“Google is the largest digital advertising company that utilizes its products to collect detailed information about the habits of its users online and offline,” he said.
“The detailed information is used to target users with paid advertisements,” he added.
This mechanism has become an old thesis known to modern society. It’s just that, the assertion that Android users are far more vulnerable to being sucked in by their data than iPhone users needs to be known to the public.
One of Schmidt’s finding points, the Chrome browser on Android sends user data to Mountain View headquarters 50 times more than the Safari browser on the iPhone.
According to Schmidt, Google collects user data actively and passively. Actively, every time a user signs in to various Google services (Gmail, YouTube, etc.), at that time the user submits personal information.
Then passively, for example, is similar to the results of the AP and Princeton University investigations. The user thinks the location data is safe because it turns off location history, in fact, the data is still sucked.
“Google is able to collect users’ personal data through various techniques that are not easily realized by users,” Schmidt explained.
“Most of the process of collecting user data by Google actually occurs when users are not directly related to Google products,” he said.
Schmidt boasted that the problem of suctioning user data like this also happened on Facebook. Even so, he has not brought the results of research to the Facebook case, so the current focus is to uncover the privacy issues of Android users.
“Google’s revenue continues to rise along with the number of users collecting data for advertising purposes. The same problem also occurs on Facebook, “he added.
