Google admits tracking users on smartphones despite disabled feature
San Francisco, Aug 18: Google has updated a help page for customers of mobile phones to acknowledge that they still can be tracked for using its Search or Maps services, even if they turn off the phone's tracking feature.
In the help page for the Location History setting, Google clarified, "This setting does not affect other location services on your device, like Google Location Services and Find My Device. Some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps," Xinhua reported.
The Google update came three days after a report of the Associated Press said that several Google apps and websites store user location even if users have turned off Location History.
The latest description of the Google help page is an apparent revision of what the US tech giant has previously stated: "With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."
Google has been criticized for tracking users' locations, which could result from its push to make more profits from advertisers who could target more easily a certain group of users with the Google tracking data.
Google's previous statement about Location History could be misleading for users who turned off the tracking feature to show they did not want to be tracked, while the users were not aware that they were still tracked for their movements and locations via other Google services, such as Google Search, Maps, weather updates or browser searches.
Google offers users ways to keep their movements or locations private by disabling the "Web and App Activity" option on their mobile devices.
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A strong magnitude 6.1 earthquake shakes Indonesia's Java Island, felt in Jakarta
Jakarta, Apr 27: A strong magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the southern part of Indonesia's main island of Java on Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of injury or significant property damage.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck 102 kilometers (63 miles) south of Banjar city at a depth of 68.3 kilometers (42.4 miles). There was no tsunami warning.
High-rises in the capital Jakarta swayed for around a minute and two-story homes shook strongly in the West Java provincial capital of Bandung and in Jakarta's satellite cities of Depok, Tangerang, Bogor and Bekasi. The quake was also felt in other cities in West Java, Yogyakarta and East Java province, according to Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency.
The agency warned of possible aftershocks.
Earthquakes are frequent across the sprawling archipelago nation, but they are rarely felt in Jakarta.
Indonesia, a seismically active archipelago of 270 million people, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on major geological faults known as the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”
A magnitude 5.6 earthquake in 2022 killed at least 602 people in West Java's Cianjur city. It was the deadliest in Indonesia since a 2018 quake and tsunami in Sulawesi killed more than 4,300 people.
In 2004, an extremely powerful Indian Ocean quake set off a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia's Aceh province.
