Do you know how google map tracks you?
Hains Jose
Security Operations Team Lead @ LCM Security Inc. | Cybersecurity Expert | GIAC Certified Incident Handler | Fortinet Certified Professional | Security+
If someone asks you this question what will your answer? Mine will be a big YES!!!
Google tracks your location – Majority for the people knows this when you go to your timeline you can see the location visited. This is a privacy issue, especially for a country like Canada which gives importance to the privacy of the people. If you think it is not a big issue, let me detail about this. If an intruder gets access to your phone, you need to worry about the data on the phone because that's the value of the phone not the real price of the device. The Intruder can check your profile, say like by viewing the timeline, the attacker can get easily knows your daily routine.
The location can determine by
- GPS
- IPaddress
- Sensor data from your device
- Information about the things near you device, such as Wi-Fi access points, Cell towers, and Bluetooth enabled device
The simple method to prevent this attack is by turning off the location. Is that enough? By turning off the location or disconnecting from networks doesn't make you safe. Even we turn off the location some google applications automatically store time-stamped location data without asking and whenever the phone connects to the network it will send data to the respective application owners or to the third parties who handle this data.
To prevent this in future you can turn this off as follows, go to myactivity.google.com/myactivity. Login to google account and you can see the activity controls, in that turn off both Web and App Activity "and "Location History". This will help you to prevent data loss to an extent. Then you will be thinking about why we can't avoid it permanently. We can't until the person decides to do so. You know the weakest link is the user which handles everything on his own. Users should be more aware of handling applications and mobile devices. You can't blame the company because when you file a complaint against them, they will say that, they do everything with the user's consent. Yes! That's right before installing application they will ask for the list of permissions and user agreement policy. Without reading it we accept everything. To conclude this, technology is like a sharp knife, it can kill someone or save someone. Its all on your hands. Thank you
Reference:
https://dailycaller.com/2018/08/13/google-tracks-users-princeton/
https://www.wired.com/story/google-tracks-you-privacy/