Google Defends Its Methods of Collecting Users Location Data through Android Phones, While Apple Remains Silent

Image via Wikipedia

The public investigations and of the method adopted to tack the locations and relevant practices has caught a lot of buzz recently. The two major companies alleged in this debacle, are Google Inc. and Apple Inc.; out of which Google has recently responded to the allegations and safeguarded its methods of gathering location data of Android users, whereas on the other hand, Apple Inc. still gives no respond even on the third day.

There is no denying from the fact that all these smartphones are constantly transmitting back the locations coordinates to the Google and Apple servers. But it should also be made clear, as both the companies are profound to profess, that all the users have complete authority to cut this transition of data collection by simply switching off the location-based services of the mobile from options. However, it is also considerable that doing this also means that you are limiting few of the most common features of the mobile like maps.

This Friday, a Google spokesman officially represented the take of the company on this matter and informed that "all location sharing on Android is opt-in by the user." Whereas, it was interestingly noted that this "opt-in" does not implies that the system has switched the features off by default any new user. In fact, these features are generally switched as the user first activates its Android phone; the first screen informs that the Google's service provides location to applications, which means that such data will be collected anonymously even when no application is running. Hence the check-box is selected to accept information and agree to it by default, any user disagreeing will specially have to uncheck it. Generally the users, who do not bother reading or go around this process, provide their location unintentionally.

Google spokesperson elaborated his point of view, explaining that "We provide users with notice and control over the collection, sharing and use of location in order to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices." He also went on clearing up that "any location data that is sent back to Google location servers is anonymized and is not tied or traceable to a specific user."

However, on the contrary the test conducted with Android phones show that the transmissions also have a unique ID which is related to each phone separately. Whereas, Google responded to this allegation explaining that this ID is only unique with every location and not related with each user. Hence, it was also claimed that once the user runs a "factory reset" of the phone, this ID is destined to change immediately, also deleting the entire phone's data.

Google has always well protected its methods of collecting location of this its users as it provides one of the best services, its traffic maps are considered to be one of the best, and these recent allegations has not affected the giant company’s ways.