In the latest update of a lawsuit against Google, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich alleged that the tech giant has continued to collect location data even after users turn off tracking on their smartphones and other devices, citing concerns from Google employees about the company’s data-collection practices.
According to documents that were submitted in court by Brnovich’s office last week, emails that were sent among Google engineers voiced concerns about the company’s location data collection efforts after an Associated Press report was released in 2018. The engineers suggested that they believed the AP article was correct.
“So there is no way to give a third party app your location and not Google? This doesn’t sound like something we would want on the front page of the [New York Times],” one employee allegedly stated in a newly unredacted section (pdf). “I agree with the article. Location off should mean location off, not except for this case or that case,” another Google employee stated.
One employee, according to the documents, stated that “real people” who use Google’s products “just think in terms of ‘location is on’, ‘location is off’ because that is exactly what you have on the front screen of your phone.”
Brnovich, a Republican, told Fox News that the documents suggest Google knew that it was collecting users’ information and would upset customers.
“What we’ve uncovered so far, I believe, shows that Google themselves understand and appreciate that what they are doing is something that is sneaky and something that would piss off consumers if they knew about it,” he said over the past weekend. “So the fact they are trying to hide what they are doing, they are being sneaky about it, and using every trick in the arsenal to stop this from seeing the light of day is all consumers need to know about Google’s intentions.”
Read full story here: Source: ‘Location Off Should Mean Location Off’: Google Hit With Lawsuit Over Data Collection ‘Schemes’