Google Admitted That It Secretly Follows Users, Even If Geolocation Is Turned Off

Google continued to collect data about users’ locations even when they turned off geolocation. The company also made it purposely difficult for Android users to find their privacy settings and even forced LG and other phone manufacturers to hide the settings. Business Insider writes about it.

According to unredacted court documents that have come to the publication’s attention, Google uses various ways to collect users’ location data, including Wi-Fi and even third-party apps unrelated to Google.

An IP address can be found from a Wi-Fi connection point, and geolocation can be used to find out the IP address.

Google collects and stores the movement history of each device. Not only geographic points are saved, but also detailed routes. You can turn off the location data, but the routes will not be saved in this case, but the geographic points are still displayed.

When Google tested versions of its Android operating system, it became apparent that users easily found and used privacy settings. Google saw this as a problem and fed to hide these settings deeper into the settings menu.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against Google last May. He claimed that the company illegally tracked users’ locations and kept these tools running in the background, even if the user turned them off in their respective settings.