You are being tracked – and cannot stop
Google Chrome is ready to make a big tracking change. We expect a global speed to say no to cookies within the most popular browser in the world – though we will need to use private browsing for some of the new protections. But while all that is happening, here is a new bad surprise for Android users who seem to be tracking anyway.
A new study warns that your phone is being followed through “cookies, identifiers and other data that Google keeps quietly on Android devices”. This makes this through its predefined apps that come pre-install. Researchers warn that “no consent is required to store any of this data and there is no problem.” They also claim “This study is the first to shed light on cookies etc. saved from pre-installed Google applications.”
This tracking starts once you start using your phone, even if you do not open the applications yourself, and the claim that there is no opt opposition will collide with the direction that deals with the traceful COOKIES of Chrome. The predetermined applications include Google and Play Games services, which are particularly in time given the breakdown around the scanning scanning app that has been “secretly installed” across the Android phone in recent months. The matter here is the same – transparency.
The new study by Trinity College Dublin calls cookie that counts advertising images and clicks, your Android ID which acts as a “continuous device and user identifier”, though there are already many warnings about resetting or incapacity, plus the usual tracking cookies. The team says that “no consent is required or given for storing any of these cookies and other data, goals have not been expressed and there is no removal from this data storage. Most of these data are stored even when the device is unemployed after a factory reset and no Google app is ever opened by the user, ie, they are not placed in response to the required services.”
I have reached Google for their comments on the study, and it is important not to overdo these findings. I have warned for years that our phones have been created to follow almost everything we do, and we need to change settings to add a module of intimacy. The matter here is one of the awareness. There is also a question about how we limit the tracking from the OS itself and its essential services, not just third -party applications.
Doug Leith University Professor said Irish news of technique “We all know that our consent is needed before an online site maintains advertising and following cookies when we visit”, but that “cookies saved from applications have received much less attention than internet cookies, partly because they are more difficult to detect, and a closer look at them is very overcrowded.”
This report comes just days after the controversial Google decision to allow again to printing the fingers of the device, after overcoming the practice in 2019. At the time, Google said “developers have found ways to use small parts of information that vary between users, such as those devices they have or which letters have installed to generate a unique identifier that can be used in the internet. They cannot clean the fingerprint, and therefore cannot control how their information is collected.
It is difficult to see this, with the lack of control, as much different – surely then it must be just as wrong. Google’s return to finger print was justified based on new “intimacy” technologies that give us more optional to what our phones can and cannot do. Critical critical that we know what to limit, of course.
This is not the first time Trinity and Leith have reported in Google data practices. In 2022, they warned that “Data sent to Google by Google Messages and apps of Google Dialer [tells] Google when message/ phone calls are made/ received … The data sent by Google Dialer include the time and duration of the call, allowing again to connect the two apparatus engaged in a call. Phone numbers are also sent to Google. “
And in 2021, the team studied “Telemetry traffic sent from modern iOS and Android devices back to Apple and Google servers and revealed that Google collects about 20 times more telemeter data from Android devices than Apple from iOS.” Somewhat alarming, as reported by Record At that time, “both iOS and Google Android broadcast telemetry, despite the user clearly chooses this [option]“
According to Leith, this latest research is a “awakening call” for data regulators to “start properly protecting” Android phone users. “Google Play Services and Google Play Store are pre -installed on almost every Android phone. This study shows that they quietly store advertising and cookie and other tracking data on people’s phones. No consent for this is required by Google, and there is no way to block these cookies.”