location tracking
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Google will pay $9.5 million to settle Washington DC AG's location-tracking lawsuit
As part of a settlement, Google has agreed to make it easier for users to opt out of location tracking.
Google will pay $392 million to 40 states in largest-ever US consumer privacy settlement
Google is paying $391.5 million to settle charges that it misled users who thought they turned off location tracking by continuing to record their movements.
Tim Hortons wants to settle location-tracking lawsuits with coffee and doughnuts
Investigators found that the company collected geolocation data without consent for over a year.
Recommended Reading: How Sony's AI outran the best sim racers
Recommended Reading highlights the week's best writing on technology and more.
Police reports suggest a larger pattern of AirTag stalking
Fifty women in eight jurisdictions called the cops after discovering an unwanted tracker.
Washington DC's AG sues Google for 'deceiving users and invading their privacy'
DC AG Karl Racine says that Google misled users about location tracking.
Tile to be acquired by family location sharing service Life360
Tile has been acquired family tracking company Life360 for $205 million in a move that could give it the resources to better contend with rivals.
Google banned a location-tracking company that sold users' data
The CDC and 'New York Times' are among SafeGraph's customers.
Google found to have 'partially' misled Australian users in location tracking case
The Australian Federal Court has ruled that Google "partially" misled users in the country when it comes to how it collects and uses location data.
Apple and Google clamp down on X-Mode, a location-tracking data broker
Apple and Google have reportedly ordered app developers to sever ties with X-Mode Social Inc., a data broker that specializes in location tracking. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the company has supplied data to US government contractors working on national security and pandemic-related issues. X-Mode has other clients, but its ties to the political world have forced Apple and Google into action.
Apple makes it easy to see the personal info apps request
Given Apple’s big focus on user privacy, it’s not a surprise that they’re announcing a few updates across this year’s set of software updates.
Google's COVID-19 reports show where people are obeying stay-at-home orders
Google has unveiled the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports in an effort to help public health officials understand how people are moving about in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The reports show location data from folks who have agreed to share their location history with Google in order to show places that are following instructions to shelter in place -- or not.
FCC chair: 911 call operators should be able to track VoIP calls
Location tracking can sometimes mean the difference between life and death when it comes to 911 calls. If you ring the emergency services with a cell phone using your provider's network, the call handler is able identify where you are, and ensure help is sent to the right place. Now, the chairman of the FCC says the same function should be enabled on VoIP calls.
Superhuman email client turns off location tracking after 'spying' controversy
The email app Superhuman was profiled by the New York Times just a week ago as a buzzworthy startup with big names from Silicon Valley lining up to pay $30 per month for its service. Since then, a blog post by Mike Davidson dived into what that money gets users has caused a war of words among many in the tech industry over privacy and communications. Other than just providing a 'premium' email client that comes with tons of keyboard shortcuts and AI assistant to make reaching Inbox Zero easier, it turned on by default a feature that puts a tracking pixel in each outgoing email. If you opened an email sent by a Superhuman user and viewed the images, then they got a report of when you opened it, how many times you opened it, and even where you were when you read the email. This revelation has creeped some people out for very good reasons explained by Davidson, so now Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra explains in a blog post that it's changing the policy. Rahul Vohra, Superhuman: We have stopped logging location information for new email, effective immediately. We are releasing new app versions today that no longer show location information. We are deleting all historical location data from our apps. We are keeping the read status feature, but turning it off by default. Users who want it will have to explicitly turn it on. We are prioritizing building an option to disable remote image loading. According to Vohra, "I am so very sorry for how our read status feature made folks feel. We did not imagine the potential for misuse. Now we are learning and changing." Many supporters of the app/feature pointed out tracking pixels online and in email aren't new, and that many businesses -- like our own The Morning After newsletter -- collect information on their readers. Still, the original configuration of Superhuman seems quite a bit different in the granularity of the information collected, and how unexpected the behavior is. Read receipts are usually visible to the receiver, and don't include location flags without some sort of opt-in. The new Superhuman setup seems to respect this, but we'll see how it's received by the public.
Facebook used its AI smarts to build detailed disease prevention maps
Facebook has created highly detailed population maps to help health organizations, researchers and universities tackle disease outbreaks and plan public health campaigns. They focus on population density with demographic estimates, how people move and network coverage.
Foursquare's unusual pitch: The ethical data company
It seems counter-intuitive that, in the thick of a backlash against Big Tech's data privacy abuses, Dennis Crowley is pitching location tracking technology at South By Southwest. Foursquare, which he co-founded, recently announced Hypertrending. It's an in-app feature that shows a real-time heat map of where everyone on Foursquare (and the apps that use its technology) are hanging out in Austin. The data is anonymized and aggregated so you don't see how many people are in a particular bar or park.
You can now block Facebook's background location tracking on Android
Facebook announced today that it is adding a new privacy control that allows Android users to turn off location tracking when they aren't using the app. The change comes just days after a report that Facebook used location data to monitor interns and other people the company deemed to be a "credible threat."
Facebook reportedly tracks the location of 'credible threats'
Facebook's security teams reportedly have a list of people they're instructed to watch out for, including ex-employees and users who have threatened the company, according to CNBC. That's a reasonable safety measure, particularly given Facebook recently evacuated its headquarters over a bomb scare and a shooter attacked YouTube's HQ last year. While many businesses keep records of potential threats, not many will be able to monitor them in a similar way to Facebook, whose information security team is able to potentially track them through location and IP data.
Apple: iPhone tracking lawsuit doesn't demonstrate harm
Remember when a group of plaintiffs decided to sue Apple, alleging that the company was allowing free apps from the App Store to gather geographical location information without their consent? Well, Bloomberg reports that Apple was in US District Court in California on Wednesday, asking Judge Lucy Koh to deny a request from plaintiffs' counsel to have the case turned into a class-action suit. Apple says that the plaintiffs haven't proven that any tracking that did take place actually resulted in harm to them. The lawyers for the plaintiffs have also dropped their claims to damages, which Apple views as proof that they're only trying for class-action status in order to recover legal fees. The lawsuit revolved around the ability of apps to have access to an iOS device's unique device identifier (UDID), allowing ad agencies to capture usage data across apps. Apple now restricts UDID access by app and is actually rejecting some apps that still use the code. [via Apple Insider]
Cisco acquires WiFi data firm ThinkSmart Technologies
Networking kingpin Cisco announced on Wednesday that it had acquired ThinkSmart Technologies, a company that analyzes location data by using WiFi technology. ThinkSmart's tech reviews a network's infrastructure by evaluating the movement of its users, traffic patterns and hours of operation. The firm then uses these analytics to help companies optimize network and staffing configurations for business operations -- a long way of saying that it's smart enough to tell a company how to better manage information flows through a network. The terms of this deal have yet to be released, but Cisco seems to think this was a smart pick up.
