Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Details, details

“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,” a Google spokesperson told Quartz.

Every time a device with a cellular data or WiFi connection came within range of a new cell tower, it would broadcast the addresses of nearby cellular towers and send the data to Google. However, the company said the data is “distinctly separate” from Location Services, which sends a device’s location to the applications.

  RT
Distinctly separate, perhaps, but not distinctly different.
Quartz found that the location-sharing was occurring on all modern Android devices. The report states that Android devices were sharing their location even when there was no SIM card installed and the user disabled location services.

[...]

The Cell ID was never incorporated into Google’s network sync system and all the data was “immediately discarded,” the company said. The tech giant promised to roll out an update that removes the cell ID collecting feature by the end of this month.
Only because they got caught.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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