Quartz Media is an organization that tracks all aspects of the global economy. They have just uncovered a disturbing fact about Google: if you have an Android device they have been accessing your location even if you have tried to keep your location private. What does Google know – and is it ethical?
They have been able to track your specific location because they are tracking cell tower address locations. Once the towers are located, and the information is sent to Google, they know where you are.
Google Admission
Google has admitted to collecting such information, and they “promise” to end the practice around December 1, 2017. The explanation they offered is as follows:
“In January of this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery. However, we never incorporated Cell ID into our network sync system, so that data was immediately discarded, and we updated it to no longer request Cell ID.”
Companies like Google want to know where you are, because they are driven by advertising dollars. There are hundreds of thousands of cell phone towers in the United States and at any given time those towers are accessed by thousands of Cell ID’s. The experts tell us there is usually (on average) a tower not more than 22 miles from your present location. In collecting Cell ID codes, they can determine your location and better target you. They can target where you shop, eat, pray, sleep, study and work.
The problem is, that you may not want to get found. In addition to military or secret government phones and those in witness protection programs there are the millions of ordinary people, like you and me, who simply don’t believe it’s anyone’s information to know where we are 24/7. We even “tell” our devices we want the location service disabled. As it turns out, even after we have disabled our devices, our locations were still being transmitted to Google! 
Don’t Look for “Big Brother”
Don’t bother looking for “Big Brother,” because he, she or it, may already be here. Google, of course, is a publicly traded entity. It is not a government agency. It is not even an agency. It is a for profit establishment that has become extremely profitable, extremely far reaching and undeniably, extremely intrusive. The size of the organization and the use of its products have created a massive monopoly that seems to “get away with” most anything it wants.
The organization can rationalize its data collection to improve its speed all it wants. However, rationalization does not take away from some basic truths.
Due to its physical and technological size and the widespread use of its search engine and many other products, Google has the opportunity to collect as much information as it desires almost unabated. In this case, the capturing of locations by Cell ID codes, had not the company been found out, the practice might have continued for years. After all, who was really to stop them?
We assume that when we disable the location feature that it is disabled, but most of us lack the expertise of high tech security experts. Google can pay for (or employ) such expertise to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Unless the ethical and legal rules of this game are changed, there is no motivation for them to cease.
The rationalization and the opportunity lead to one, primary reason for their behavior; need. The more that Google knows about you, the better they and their advertisers can track you. The better they can track you, the more effectively they can sell you goods and services. Also, factors such as location will get only more sophisticated in the future. They will clearly “follow you” into your home, and even into various rooms of your home. They will track your behavior right down to your habits. Unless, of course, we tell them it is ethically unacceptable.
We had all better hurry. It is almost too late to tell them anything. What does Google know – and is it ethical?
-YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!
