Last year, Arizona filed a lawsuit against Google claiming that the company illegally collected location data from smartphone users even after they opted out.
Newly unredacted documents from this same case revealed that the Search Giant’s own executives and engineers knew just how difficult the company had made it for smartphone users to keep their location data private.
As Insider reports, Google continued collecting location data even when users turned off various location-sharing settings. “This made popular privacy settings harder to find, and even pressured LG and other phone makers into hiding settings precisely because users liked them.”
The company’s former Vice President, Jack Menzel, who oversees Google Maps, also admitted during a deposition that the only way Google wouldn’t be able to figure out a user’s home and work locations is if that person intentionally threw Google off the trail by setting their home and work addresses as some other random locations.
Jen Chai, a Senior Product Manager, happens to be the man who controls location services at Google. The unredacted document from the lawsuit claims that he didn’t know how the company’s complex web of privacy settings interacted with each other.
The reporter at Insider said that Google and LG are yet to respond to requests for comment on this story.
Digital Content Next and News Media Alliance have requested that new sections of the documents be unredacted. The trade groups argued that it was in the public’s interest to know and that the Search Giant was using its legal resources to suppress scrutiny of its data collection practices. Last week, a judge gave heed to this request.
Insider’s reporter further added that the unsealed versions of the documents paint an even more detailed picture of how Google cast a shadow over its data collection techniques, confusing not just its users but also its own staff.
The documents revealed that Search Company practises several ways of collecting user location data. This includes WiFi and even third-party apps not affiliated with Google, forcing users to share their data in order to use those apps or, in some cases, even connect their phones to WiFi.
“So there is no way to give a third party app your location and not Google?” one employee said, according to the documents, adding: “This doesn’t sound like something we would want on the front page of the [New York Times].”
When Google tested versions of its Android operating system that made privacy settings easier to find, users took advantage of them, which Google viewed as a “problem,” according to the documents. To solve that problem, Google then sought to bury those settings deeper within the settings menu.
Google also tried to convince smartphone makers to hide location settings “through active misrepresentations and/or concealment, suppression, or omission of facts” – that is, data Google had showing that users were using those settings – “in order to assuage [manufacturers’] privacy concerns.”
Google employees appeared to recognize that users were frustrated by the company’s aggressive data collection practices, potentially hurting its business.
“Fail #2: *I* should be able to get *my* location on *my* phone without sharing that information with Google,” one employee said.
“This may be how Apple is eating our lunch,” they added, saying Apple was “much more likely” to let users take advantage of location-based apps and services on their phones without sharing the data with Apple.
