Android user chucks potential $10bn+ sueball at Google over 'spying', 'harvesting data'... this time to build supposed rival to TikTok called 'Shorts' Google "abuses Android OS to obtain a competitive advantage", according to a lawsuit filed this week alleging that the Alphabet offshoot "secretively monitored and collected users' sensitive personal data" to develop apps to compete with TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. The putative class-action suit, filed on Wednesday in the …
I got an Email from the goog yesterday, that I can apply for settlement for a class action suit they lost for leaking data from Google+ accounts 2 years ago.
The sum of $12 per user can be mine IF - You got the email, will give them your real name and address, and your bank routing and account number.
AS IF I would trust goog with that data if they can't even keep,,, well anything from their system of greed. No doubt the account data will be leaked and cost way more than a crappy $12. Hell, if they planned this it couldn't be better for them, leak a million peoples data, then offer to pay them $12 each to get even more data from them. Blah.
Just the other day I was talking to a friend about derivatives (the calculus type) and she asked how I'd define them. After I gave her a brief expo, I picked my phone to look for a more exact definition.
I typed d-e-f- into the google search box and the first suggestion was "Definition of derivative"
What are the odds?
On a side note, I don't have google's voice assistant enabled
Using anything that is made by or is associated with Google and you know what you are letting yourself in for.
That is to put it bluntly, being spied upon morning, noon and night. Everything you do is fair game for Google and everyone else who wants to get your data.
But what is the alternative? Apple? Frying pan meet fire perhaps?
Not quite how it's supposed to work. What should happen is when they caught with their hands in the cookie jar and lose the case, they are supposed to stop putting their hands in the cookie jar. Not find other ways of getting the cookies out of the jar until caught again. FFS, even a 3yo can figure that out! But not $big_corp.
What should happen is when they caught with their hands in the cookie jar and lose the case, they are supposed to stop putting their hands in the cookie jar. Not find other ways of getting the cookies out of the jar until caught again.
If laws applied to wealthy people and corporations, sure. The US has chosen a different path.
If Google is spying on how much you use TikTok so they can decide "hey we should clone that" does it really hurt you personally? It obviously hurts app vendors if Google uses such information to determine what apps they should copy, so shouldn't it be the app vendors that sue over this?
End users have standing (and good reason) to sue over all of Google's data collection for OTHER reasons, just not for this in particular.
I don’t know the answer, but it’s easy to imagine that there might be users who’d rather their app usage wasn’t exfiltrated from their mobile and handed to Google’s developers. According to an informed friend there’s some pretty saucy apps...
No, they have reasons to sue over the other things and this too. You've described the data as what apps and how long (I.E. when). There are several good reasons I don't want Google to have a log of what I do with my phone, including when it was in use for each thing. And there is no good reason for them to collect said information. I as a user would feel this alone violates my privacy.
Now, if the allegations made here are correct, they have a lot more data than that. If they are analyzing how I interact with apps, it's probably not just seeing whether I use them a lot, but instead seeing how they are used (E.G. which utilities of each app I am using), how active I am during use, etc. This has all sorts of potential to contain personal information, and I can't know it's happening, let alone see what data is collected or control it. This is deeply concerning. The only potential reason not to punish Google intensely for this is if they can prove that it doesn't do what the allegations say it does. I haven't yet found a good technical analysis of this, as most of the coverage of the topic has happened in the past few weeks. If they can't release a comment that can disprove the allegations, I predict numerous complaints worldwide, and those complaints will be justified.
>Now, if the allegations made here are correct, they have a lot more data than that.
Its not as if this sort of thing doesn't come up regularly in ElReg articles, is it?
Practically all of the software technolgoy used on the web is designed to collect user data information. It feeds a huge ecosystem. And yet its a surprise?
The revelation here is that Google is using this information against the vendors of third party apps, not that they are collecting that information. Only a moron would think they weren't collecting every scrap of information they can, and your usage of third party apps is just the tip of the iceberg.
That may be, but although we knew it was very likely, I don't think we had proof that Google had that level of spyware in their code. It would make sense that they did given their previous attitude toward our privacy, but it's also not a very useful method of violating our rights. If their code does provide them enough information to identify apps to compete with and tactics to use when doing so, it also offers the proof of what we assumed. Given that proof, it's time to use it to attack Google for their privacy problems from all fronts.
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