Ever wondered why your data is draining so quickly each month? If you’re an Android user, here is a possible explanation. Google is using up to 1GB of your data each month to send back the data it’s collecting through your smartphone.
This claim is currently under investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) after tech corporation Oracle made the shocking discovery.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Oracle says it has intercepted and decrypted messages sent back to Google from devices running Google’s Android operating system.
The data being collected and transmitted include account information, location data and search history which helps to target advertisers to customers.
There are more than 10 million Android users in Australia and, according to the Daily Telegraph’s calculations, this hijacked would cost data between $445 million and $580 million per year at the current rate of between $3.60 and $4.50 per gigabyte.
Oracle says data is used in the background when searching for places on Google Maps as it says in Google’s privacy consent.
What many people may not be aware of is that the monitoring continues in the background even after the maps app has been closed down.
The ACCC has been briefed by Oracle and are currently investigating the accusations.
In the past Google has been fairly open about tracking your location and using this data but the surprise here is the volume of data it is using to do it.
Any customer who breaks their data allowance are usually charged $10 per gigabyte of extra data used.
For those Android users impacted by these claims, it could be tipping them over the edge and forcing them into these excess data charges.
