Citing developer Magnus Eriksson, the site explains how Google has been also collecting data on the location of its users just as Apple has.
Eriksson says that after reading about the Apple hoopla
he decided to look into how his own Android devices had been tracking him, and offered a list of locations (longitude and longitude data) as well as accompanying time stamps.
$ ./parse.py cache.celldb version: 1
total: 41key accuracy conf. latitude longitude time240:5:15:983885 1186 75 57.704031 11.910801 04/11/11 20:03:14 +0200
240:5:15:983882 883 75 57.706322 11.911692 04/13/11 01:41:29 +0200
240:5:75:4915956 678 75 57.700175 11.976824 04/13/11 11:52:16 +0200
240:5:75:4915953 678 75 57.700064 11.976629 04/13/11 11:53:09 +0200
240:7:61954:58929 1406 75 57.710205 11.921849 04/15/11 19:46:31 +0200
240:7:15:58929 -1 0 0.000000 0.000000 04/15/11 19:46:32 +0200
240:5:75:4915832 831 75 57.690024 11.998419 04/15/11 16:13:53 +0200
To cut a long story short, Google is tracking us too.
Before anyone whips out their pitchforks and heads on over to the Googleplex, this information isn’t available unless you have a rooted device – something most won’t posses.
As TNW and Eriksson points out, this information is collected when an app asks for location data, usually with the information coming from cell-tower triangulation. This information is then sent to Google, with a set of coordinates then returned.
The real question though is what are Apple, Google and probably other companies doing with this information? Does it even matter? No more location information is available than our cell providers already posses, though whether even the possibility of those companies known your location bothers you very much depends on your views on privacy.
One thing is for sure though, this isn’t going to go away overnight. If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to spook users and cause a storm online, it’s privacy. Unfortunately both Apple and Google have found a great way to poke that particular bear with an unusually large stick.
Via: redmondpie.com.