Google Collects Android Location Data Even When Location Service Is Disabled
Nov 21, 2017
Do you own an Android smartphone? If yes, then you are one of those billions of users whose smartphone is secretly gathering location data and sending it back to Google. Google has been caught collecting location data on every Android device owner since the beginning of this year (that's for the past 11 months)—even when location services are entirely disabled, according to an investigation conducted by Quartz. This location-sharing practice doesn't want your Android smartphone to use any app, or turn on location services, or even have a SIM card inserted. All it wants is to have your Android device to be connected to the Internet. The investigation revealed that Android smartphones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers, and this data could be used for " Cell Tower Triangulation "—a technique widely used to identify the location of a phone/device using data from three or more nearby cell towers. Each time your Android device come...
