Unredacted swimsuit exhibits Google’s personal engineers confused by privateness settings

Enlarge (credit score: Sean Gallup | Getty Photographs)

Newly unsealed and partially unredacted paperwork from a shopper fraud swimsuit the state of Arizona filed towards Google present that firm staff knew and mentioned amongst themselves that the corporate’s location privateness settings had been complicated and doubtlessly deceptive.

In 2018, the Related Press reported that Maps and another Google companies (on each iPhone and Android) had been storing customers’ location information even when customers had explicitly turned Location Historical past off.

“There are a variety of various ways in which Google might use location to enhance individuals’s expertise, together with: Location Historical past, Internet and App Exercise, and thru device-level Location Providers,” a Google spokesperson advised the AP on the time. “We offer clear descriptions of those instruments, and sturdy controls so individuals can flip them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.”