If even Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, admits that the operation of the privacy settings of his company’s services escapes him, doubts may set in. So who is in control of our data?
When we talk about Google and its approach to the processing of personal data, we know that the subject is sensitive. Last year, the company announced a more transparent and secure approach on this subject. Recently, information from the class action between Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez and Google turned out to be truly disturbing. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google himself, admits that he is also swimming in troubled waters when it comes to the features offered to users by the company to control their privacy settings.
The gap between promises and reality
This is the testimony of an expert during this appeal, Jonathan Hochman, who pointed out the famous “Web & App Activity” option. This is presented as a complete control functionality for users to secure their data. For Hochman, she would only be window dressing. This should logically allow users to prevent Google from keeping their activities on their servers, but in fact, this is not the case.
A rather problematic situation, which Hochman considers even more serious when he asserts that Sundar Pichai got himself mixed up by testifying before Congress. He said users can “ clearly see what information is collected and stored » by Google in the “My account” section. However, the founder of the company’s Office of Privacy and Data Protection said the opposite: he does not know of any setting possibility for users to prevent Google from collecting data relating to their activities on applications. Rather funny.
Data collection at Google, a real gray area
Even if the tech giant seems to claim the opposite, its approach to confidentiality and its respect appears to be intentionally veiled. Indeed, the “Web & App Activity” option is only effective on a very limited part of Google services. As for the collection of data for advertising purposes, it has absolutely no impact. The company uses other technologies to collect it: advertising SDKs or “Firebase” push notifications still allow them to acquire this data using third-party services. Obviously, these cannot be disabled.
Hochman judges this set of covert practices and tactics as “ Orwellian », judging that Google leaves its users with only a simple illusion of control. Nowadays, the opacity of the firm’s operations in certain areas is no secret. On the other hand, realizing that management itself does not know all the maneuvers in place in their processes is frankly worrying.
Source : Ars Technica
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