People who download lots of apps on their Android device will eventually encounter some that ask permission to track their phone. When a person denies that permission, they think that the situation has been resolved. However, they would be mistaken. The reality is that many of these apps will track your location anyway. How are they able to do this? It is done through the use of software development kits that are installed in many different apps. You might have agreed to allow certain apps to track your location in the past. If this is the case, the software development kits in the apps you have given permission to will share your location data with the software development kits in the apps you have denied permission to.
This situation is understandably very troubling for the billions of people who use Android devices around the world. Google has been told about the security problem. There will apparently be a few updates that will be included in the new Android Q that will soon be released. This is the latest version of the Android operating system. The bad news is that the vast majority of people who use an Android device will not be getting the new version. In fact, more than half of the Android users on the planet are still using the version that came out three years ago.
One of the big concerns is that certain Android photo apps are capable of sending GPS coordinates back to the companies that made them. Google has addressed this issue by saying that once Android Q is installed, all of the GPS data will be hidden by default. All companies that all putting photo apps in the Google Play Store will need to reveal if they are able to access GPS coordinates. This will definitely help. However, there are many people who do not think that Google is doing enough to solve the problem. Some Android users believe that Google should send fixes in security updates to people who are using older versions. However, there is no indication that they have any plans to do this.
This situation only serves to highlight how complex these apps are. You need to be very tech savvy in order to prevent yourself from being tracked and your privacy from being invaded by app developers. It remains to be seen if Google will take steps to stop this in the future.
