Google accused of tracking users even with 'location tracking' turned off

Google claims it's all part of improving the user experience

Google has been accused of tracking users even when they have the ‘location tracking' privacy setting switched off.

The tracking relates to users of Google services, such as Google Maps and its search services.

That's the claim of an Associated Press investigation, backed up by computer science specialists at Princeton University.

"Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects - such as a warrant that police in Raleigh, North Carolina, served on Google last year to find devices near a murder scene. So the company lets you ‘pause' a setting called Location History," reports AP.

It continues: "Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you've been. Google's support page on the subject states: "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."

"That isn't true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking."

Google Maps will store a snapshot of a user's location whenever they open Maps, regardless of their settings, claims AP, as do automatic daily weather updates on Android devices. Even some searches on Google will pinpoint users to precise longitudes and latitudes, accurate to under a metre.

Google claims that the location tracking - even location tracking switched off - is all part of the company's aim of improving people's experience, according to a statement from the company. It claimed that it enables people to delete the data it holds on people and their devices at any time - although that is a time-consuming process.

However, the company's activities are increasingly catching the eye of US lawmakers. Senator Mark Warner told AP that it had become "frustratingly common" for technology companies "to have corporate practices that diverge wildly from the totally reasonable expectations of their users". It may also attract renewed scrutiny in the European Union following the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May.

The claims are nothing new for Google, though. An investigation by Quartz last year showed that Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby mobile cell towers and sending them back to Google. Users can only stop this data collection by switching on Flight Mode.

Google justified the surreptitious location data-collection as a means of improving message delivery.

In October last year, the company's Google Home Mini device was found to be listening-in and collecting all nearby conversations - a ‘feature' that the company blamed on a hardware malfunction.

And that also followed revelations that Google's Street View cars had routinely collected personal WiFi network information.