“Google is always watching, even when it promises to look away”. This is what states one of the latest filed complaint against Google, alleging that the tech giant tracks both user browsing activity and data across a wide variety of apps.
The complaint centers around the allegation of unlawful and intentional collection of confidential data even when the user has followed Google recommendations to prevent this.
According to the lawsuit, Google intercepts, tracks and collects data by way of the cross-platform Firebase software development kit (SDK) that is effectively a prerequisite for 3rd-party Android apps that want access to G Analytics and marketing on the Google Play store.
The smartphone is the ideal tool for advertisers and data brokers to collect data about you. This is usually done through:
– The SDK (which is not a tracker itself) used by app developers to build profiles of its users.
– Hidden trackers in apps.
Privacy issues happen when the app send your data to 3rd parties that sell it to marketers and data brokers without consent.
So, when you turn on location services for a weather app, you may be sending your location data back to someone else.
What is not great is when companies portray a sense of privacy and use other measures to bypass this.
AdTech
