Google Is Tracking And Saving Your Location Data, Even When You Disable The Sharing Feature

Your smartphone's GPS isn't just a way to find yourself on Google Maps, it's also how a lot of apps can offer you personalised content for your area, including food delivery services around you.

Of course, not everyone likes their location being broadcast to Google at all times, but it seems that's never really been an option.

According to the Associated Press, Google is still storing a user's location data even when they've turned on the privacy feature. Google does ask users whether they want to share their location data for each app individually, part of a new privacy etiquette system it adopted a couple of years ago. Where you earlier had to either accept or reject all permissions for an app at once, Android eventually separated each of these so users could pick and choose the permissions they were willing to give to each app.

But it's come to light now, even if you turn off location sharing with Google apps, it doesn't really pause the tracking feature. With Google Maps, for instance, just opening the app to find your way sans any directions lookup will still give Google your location. The same goes for the automatic weather updates you receive in Google Now, which give a fair approximation of your location. Researchers at Princeton University confirmed the AP¡¯s findings.

¡°Location History is a Google product that is entirely opt in, and users have the controls to edit, delete, or turn it off at any time,¡± Google responded to Bloomberg Quint in a statement. ¡°As the story notes, we make sure Location History users know that, when they disable the product, we continue to use location to improve the Google experience when they do things like perform a Google search or use Google for driving directions.¡±

The problem is, that notification is kinda buried far down in your Android. Normally, you'd just turn of location sharing either from app permissions, or the first time you start the app. However, there's a separate Google Settings app that comes pre-installed on Android devices. In that is a little section for location, that's turned by default, only for apps you've shared permissions with. All good so far.

What's not great is that even if you override everything by turning this off, it only turns off location sharing. Location history on the other hand remains active. It's less of a notification, as Google implies, and more like a bit of fine print at the bottom of a contract. And for the privacy conscious, it's certainly something they would have appreciated being specifically informed of.