Android mobiles share a large amount of data with Google’s servers, also passively. This is specified by a lawsuit against the company filed in the United StatesAccording to the plaintiffs, an Android mobile sends about 8.8 MB per day without the user doing anything and with the factory phone. 94% of these communications are with Google.
We all know that our smartphones access the Internet to show us information, both when using applications and when we turn off the screen. Apps receive notifications, backups upload their logs and a large amount of data is synchronized with our accounts, especially with Google. How many? A lawsuit would have put a figure on passive data: 260 MB each month.
8.8 MB daily and 94% of this passive data directed to Google
The class action lawsuit was filed in the San José, California LLC courts. As stated in said demand (via The Register), multiple Android users came together to denounce the enormous passive consumption of their phones. According to the tests they carried out to formalize the demand data, Google would have developed Android so that each device constantly communicates with the servers to transmit information without the user being aware of it and without actively using the company’s applications.
Beyond what the exchange of mobile data between Google servers and Android devices entails in terms of privacy, the lawsuit denounces the large passive consumption of information. Without really knowing what is transmitted with the data, an analysis commissioned by the plaintiffs’ lawyers, and carried out on a Samsung Galaxy S7 to which no applications were installed to leave it as it came from the factory, showed that the phone consumed 8.8MB of mobile data per day. Of that figure, and always according to the lawyers’ data, 94% percent of the communications corresponded to the sending of information to Google’s servers. A Google account had been registered on the mobile.
This exchange of information would have a clear objective for the complainants, as stated in the application:
“[Google] designed the Android operating system to collect large amounts of information about users; that Google uses to generate billions in annual profit by selling targeted digital ads“.
Among the information that is transmitted between an Android and Google servers are the location data, the usage records of each device, information about the installed apps, analysis of Play Protect and various user data that, in theory, are stored in the Google account. The problem, according to the lawsuit, is that much of the information is transmitted without the user actively using their phone, which does not only imply privacy risks, but also a consumption that has not been able to of its data rate and that it must also pay.
At the moment The lawsuit is pending in the California courts. We have contacted google to find out if it has an official response to the one presented in the California courts. 2020 is not being a good year for Google in your country.
Via | The Register
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The news A lawsuit against Google claims that Android devices consume more than 250 MB of data per month without using it was originally published in Xataka Android by Ivan Linares .
