Privacy-Focused Android Q Still Lets Advertisers Track You

'"The upcoming version of the Android operating system is taking a
strong focus on privacy," reports SD Times, "but the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) believes it could still do better."

Android Q's new privacy features include: user control over app access
to device location, new limits on access to files in shared external
storage, restrictions on launching activities, and restrictions on
access to the device's hardware and sensors... "However, in at least
one area, Q's improvements are undermined by Android's continued
support of a feature that allows third-party advertisers, including
Google itself, to track users across apps," Bennett Cyphers, engineer
for the EFF, wrote in a post. "Furthermore, Android still doesn't let
users control their apps' access to the Internet, a basic permission
that would address a wide range of privacy concerns."

According to Cyphers, while Android Q has new restrictions on
non-resettable device identifies, it will allow unrestricted access
for its own tracking identifier [called "advertising ID"]... "Facebook
and other targeting companies allow businesses to upload lists of ad
IDs that they have collected in order to target those users on other
platforms," he wrote... "On Android, there is no way for the user to
control which apps can access the ID, and no way to turn it off. While
we support Google taking steps to protect other hardware identifiers
from unnecessary access, its continued support of the advertising ID
-- a "feature" designed solely to support tracking -- undercuts the
company's public commitment to privacy," he wrote...

Cypher also noted that while Apple's iOS has similar identifiers for
advertisers that contradict with its privacy campaign, it does enable
users to turn off the tracking.

In fact, Android Q also ships with an "opt out of ad personalization"
checkbox where users can indicate that they don't want Google's
identifier to track them, Cyphers reports -- but "the checkbox doesn't
affect the ad ID in any way.

"It only encodes the user's 'preference', so that when an app asks
Android whether a user wants to be tracked, the operating system can
reply 'no, actually they don't.' Google's terms tell developers to
respect this setting, but Android provides no technical safeguards to
enforce this policy."'

-- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/07/27/0526206

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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