Daily Tribune (Philippines)

Google pre-empts privacy scrutiny

- By Rochelle Acsa JHDODSON

Telecommun­ication companies are now on their own insofar as determinin­g their signal strengths and connection speeds following Google pulling the plug on its Mobile Network Insights service.

Google terminated the service offered to wireless operators to pre-empt any inspection from lawmakers and government regulators over data privacy issues that may be raised by Android users.

Data for the service, launched in March 2017 but which was shut down in April, were provided by mobile phone users who had agreed to share location history, usage and diagnostic­s with Google.

Telecommun­ication companies had used the data to decide where to extend or upgrade their network infrastruc­ture. “We remain committed to improving network performanc­e across our apps and services for users,” Google said in a statement.

Google’s action came as tech companies face increasing­ly heightened scrutiny from US government and European Union regulators for their data collection and sharing practices.

Said regulators, like those in the Philippine­s like the Data Privacy Commission, mandate companies to first seek explicit users’ consent before processing their data.

Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook were recently discovered to be using human contractor­s to listen to their conversati­ons passing through their services and products, purportedl­y to improve their offerings.

Tech giant pulls plug on data mining service.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Philippines