Google Sued For Tracking Users' Locations 266
RedEaredSlider writes "Two Android phone users are suing Google for $50 million in the wake of revelations that their phones might be tracking their locations. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on April 27, is seeking class-action status. The plaintiffs, Julie Brown and Kayla Molaski, are residents of Oakland County. The two say in the suit that Google's privacy policy did not say that the phones broadcast their location information. Further, they say Google knew that most users would not understand that the privacy policy would allow for Google to track users' locations."
Apple was sued for their location tracking last week. According to Boy Genius Report, iOS tracking will be addressed in version 4.3.3, which is due out within a couple weeks.
good (Score:3, Insightful)
Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:good (Score:3, Insightful)
ummm. It is the law at least for the carriers to collect that info. That is how 911 location tracking works.
The thing I can not stomach is this law suit is because "They are too stupid to read and understand and didn't bother to ask questions!"
I mean really do people have no shame?
Re:good (Score:5, Insightful)
Cell phones don't work if the towers don't know where you are. Location tracking is part of the spec.
What a crock of double standard! (Score:1, Insightful)
Not to mention, unlike Apple, who miraculously has avoided suit over this same problem, you can ACTUALLY turn it off, so it doesn't send ANY data.
I don't use the GPS or location features, so I disable all location triangulation, GPS satellite, and reporting features in my Droid. On my iPhone 4, I can't do that, no matter how badly I want to.
So who really deserves to get sued here?
Re:good (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really a statement (Score:2, Insightful)
Reading a EULA is like reading a paperback novel. Only it's written in Sanskrit and there's no character development, plot, or even anything interesting happening. Seriously, they write those things knowing damn well that NOBODY WILL EVER READ THEM. Heck, most people don't even possess the wherewithall or legal chops to read them. When you're standing in a queue in Best Buy you rarely have time for such things. And then when you get the thing home I'm sure the first thing you want to do is sit and swot over 80 pages of legal blurb and jargon then spend 2 weeks formulating the holes and headroom for exploitation in that contract before you sign your life away. If we all did this there wouldn't be a single consumer in this country...guaranteed!! The average employment contract is simpler than an iPod contract, WTH?
Plus, by the time you've read the EULA it's changed anyway so what's the point?
Re:Irresistible (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Irresistible (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm saying this over and over these days, but: Knowing the location of the phone that views a certain ad right now is not evil. Knowing WHICH phone it is and/or WHO the user is, this is evil.
Google (and MS) just use an engineering approach here and use the Unique Device ID for tagging the location data (and AdMob even adds the Carrier User ID). What Apple does with iAd (use random IDs that get renewed on the iPhone every 12 hours) is much better, since it avoids this privacy problem to begin with. Using random IDs allows targeting phones and harvesting location information without identifying users/phones or tracking users over time.
Come on, fellow nerds: There ARE technical solutions to technical problems. Recognize that privacy is valuable and implement your stuff in a way that honours privacy by making abuse impossible (or at least possible only in a very abstract way) and you can have both: Advertisers targeting users and users not being tracked.
The amount of dumb fear and paranoia and especially the unwillingness to talk about technical details is just mindblowing. Advertisers are not after YOU. They may be after all people in a certain location or with a certain income or whatever, but they do not care for you personally and in fact they would LOVE to not have to care for such privacy problems by getting a clean implementation that gives them clean and anonymous data to work with. They work with "dirty" and too personal data only if they haven't got anything else.
Re:Irresistible (Score:5, Insightful)
They're Idiots. I just got my first Android phone. You get warned when you go through setup. You get warned when you install and start EVERY APPLICATION that they'll be tracking you. There is no ambiguity if you have half a brain.
Idiots.
They are providing the location information! (Score:4, Insightful)
It is possible that Android is sending more information than I am aware of, but the only thing I have heard of is the network based location service.
The way this works is that the phone looks at what WiFi base stations you can see near you. It then sends a list of these to a server that has a database of the location of a bunch these base stations. The server looks up the locations of the stations you are near and estimates your location from that.
It is impossible for the server to tell you where you are without knowing where you are! The only other option would be for the server to continuously distribute gigabytes of WiFi database information to the phones, most of which would never be used. Querying for just the information needed is a better design.
And as others have already pointed out, this service is off by default, and gives a clearly understandable warning when turned on.