Recently unredacted documents in a lawsuit against Google reveal that the company’s own executives and employees knew how difficult the tech giant makes it for smartphone users to keep their location data private.
Business Insider reports that recently unredacted documents in a lawsuit against Google reveal that the company’s own executives and engineers knew how difficult the company made it for users to keep their location data private. According to the documents, Google continued to collect location data even when users turned off various location-sharing settings, made popular privacy settings hard to find within smartphone settings menus, and allegedly pressured LG and other smartphone makers into hiding settings solely because users liked them.
During a deposition, Jack Menzel, a former vice president overseeing Google Maps, admitted that the only way the company wouldn’t be able to determine a user’s home and work locations is if that person intentionally worked to throw Google off their trail by setting their home and work addresses as different locations. Read more…
