Beware! Android phones help Google track your every move
Android phones can reveal all of a user's physical activities in the real-world with Google and other third-party apps installed on the device, says a report. A permission called "Activity Recognition" tracks user's physical activity -sitting, standing, walking, biking, etc- with the help of built-in sensors. The same is shared with Google and apps allowing them to track user's every movement literally. Read more!
Privacy search engine DuckDuckGo highlights the issue
The "Activity Recognition" issue was discussed on Reddit; it was highlighted by Google's search engine competitor DuckDuckGo. The post says Shazam and SoundHound Android apps request "Activity Recognition" permission. However, it is not clear why these apps need to detect users' physical activities. Though some claim activity recognition is nothing new, the Reddit post suggests many Android users are unaware of this permission.
What does Google say?
According to Google, the Activity Recognition API (application programming interface) is built on top of all the sensors in an Android device. The sensors provide information about what a user is doing, every second. The tech-giant, however, claims, "With dozens of signals from multiple sensors and slight variations in how people do things, detecting what users are doing is not easy."
Real-time user activity monitoring
Activity Recognition API collects information from location, proximity, gyroscope and other sensors and shares it with Google and third-party apps. It can tell where a phone is (inside a car or on bicycle), whether being moved/tilted, or on a person who is still/moving. It can also identify if a user is performing more than one activity at once: walking while being on a bus.
Activity Recognition automatically detects activities: Google
Google says Activity Recognition API can automatically identify physical activities by reading "short bursts of sensor data" at regular intervals and process the same using machine learning. The API gives every activity's findings a "likelihood rating" out of 100. The higher the rating, the more confident it is about what a user is doing and shares the physical activity information with the apps.
Applications can monitor background activities
Google stated, "A common use case is that an application wants to monitor activities in the background and perform an action when a specific activity is detected." For example, apps can monitor users' heartbeat when they run or go into "car mode" when they drive.
You cannot disable the "creepy" activity monitoring
Though Google says Activity Recognition API is useful, it can still be a privacy risk. What's worse is it can't be disabled. Also, this specific permission is buried in the "Other" permission category at the time of app-installation. Users can reportedly go to each app's settings and disable the permission. But it's difficult to even find out which apps seek this permission.
