Unredacted suit shows Google’s own engineers confused by privacy settings

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Newly unsealed and partially unredacted documents from a consumer fraud suit the state of Arizona filed against Google show that company employees knew and discussed among themselves that the company's location privacy settings were confusing and potentially misleading.

In 2018, the Associated Press reported that Maps and some other Google services (on both iPhone and Android) were storing users' location data even when users had explicitly turned Location History off.

"There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people's experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services," a Google spokesperson told the AP at the time. "We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time."

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