With Apple implementing a privacy disclosure for apps in its iOS App Store, Google has dragged its feet coming clean about how much it tracks its users. And it’s starting to cause problems.
In early January, I reported that Google hadn’t updated any of its apps on iOS (and iPadOS) since early December, the day before a new Apple App Store privacy policy went into effect. That policy requires app makers to provide a privacy dashboard in their app listings in the store that details which data each app collects and tracks.
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But since then, Google has only updated a handful of apps and only very recently: The Google Fiber, Play Movies & TV, and Translate apps were updated in very late January, and the Google Authenticator and Stadia apps have been updated since then. But major Google apps like Gmail, Drive, Maps, Photos, Search, and YouTube still haven’t been updated since early December.
This week, Google app users on iOS started seeing warning messages related to out-of-date apps when they tried to sign-in to their Google accounts.
“You should update this app,” the message reads. “The version you’re using doesn’t include the latest security features to keep you protected. Only continue if you understand the risks.”
As it turns out, this message was a bug, and Google has since fixed it. But after months of leaving its most popular apps unpatched, one wonders what’s taking so long. Are these apps really such data tracking monsters that Google is worried about disclosing what they really do?
Google’s not talking. All it will say, for now, is that it will add the privacy dashboard to its iOS/iPadOS apps the next time they’re updated. Whenever that will be.
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<blockquote><em><a href="#612832">In reply to Saarek:</a></em></blockquote><p>I was the same way, I had nothing to hide so what did it matter?</p><p><br></p><p>Then things happened that just irked me. One day at lunch I was searching for a 3.5mm Xbox adapter for my son's Sennheiser head set the mic/audio into one for the Xbox. I found it and ordered it.</p><p><br></p><p>I get back to the office and about an hour later both a phone call (let it go to VM) and email from a Sennheiser business account rep, wanting to sell my company headsets for work (phone type).</p><p><br></p><p>So searching from my computer at home for a non-business product resulted in that quick of a turn around. It is just scary.</p><p><br></p><p>After that I started removing Google from my life. Things like the Netflix Social Dilemma movie also helped, as I no longer have a Facebook account and I am social media free.</p><p><br></p><p>Twitter was about to die before Trump, running out of money and no one wanted to touch it when they tried to sell it (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Disney etc) because it was so toxic. Now that he is gone from office and banned from Twitter, I do hope it goes down in flames. It is the sewer of the Internet.</p>
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<blockquote><em><a href="#612820">In reply to BMcDonald:</a></em></blockquote><p>Same. I only use YouTube now. If there was a decent alternative I would switch in a second. My final move was to DuckDuck go last year and I am surprised how much I do not miss Google search.</p>