{"id":1396372,"date":"2022-03-23T13:00:35","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1396372"},"modified":"2022-03-23T13:00:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T17:00:46","slug":"always-watching-googles-messages-dialer-apps-send-user-data-to-internet-giant-without-consent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/always-watching-googles-messages-dialer-apps-send-user-data-to-internet-giant-without-consent\/","title":{"rendered":"Always Watching: Google&#039;s Messages, Dialer Apps Send User Data to Internet Giant Without Consent"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Falways-watching-googles-messages-dialer-apps-send-user-data-to-internet-giant-without-consent%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1396372&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p class=\"subheading\">A recent research paper reveals that Google\u2019s Messages and Dialer apps on Android smartphones have been sending user data back to the Masters of the Universe without notice or user consent.<\/p>\n<p>The Register <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2022\/03\/21\/google_messages_gdpr\/\">reports<\/a>\u00a0that the default Google Messages and Dialer apps for Android devices have been collecting and sending user data to the internet giant without notifying users or gaining their consent. Users have also not been given the opportunity to opt out of the data collection, possibly violating Europe\u2019s data protection laws.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<div id=\"attachment_9334381\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/media.breitbart.com\/media\/2018\/09\/GoogleChrome.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome, speaks at Google\u2019s annual developer conference, Google I\/O, in San Francisco on 28 June 2012 ( KIMIHIRO HOSHINO\/AFP\/GettyImages )<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_8582510\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Sabo-Google.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8582510\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Sabo-Google.jpg\" alt=\"Sabo mocks Google CEO Sundar Pichai\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sabo mocks Google CEO Sundar Pichai (unsavoryagents.com)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scss.tcd.ie\/doug.leith\/privacyofdialerandsmsapps.pdf\">research paper<\/a> titled \u201cWhat Data Do The Google Dialer and Messages Apps On Android Send to Google?\u201d published by\u00a0Trinity College Dublin computer science professor Douglas Leith states that Message and Dialer, used for sending text messages and making phone calls, have been sending user data to the Google Play Services Clearcut logger service and to the company\u2019s Firebase analytics service.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>The paper states:\u00a0\u201cThe data sent by Google Messages includes a hash of the message text, allowing linking of sender and receiver in a message exchange. The data sent by Google Dialer includes the call time and duration, again allowing linking of the two handsets engaged in a phone call. Phone numbers are also sent to Google.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Messages and Dialer are installed on over one billion Android devices including devices offered by\u00a0AT&#038;T and T-Mobile on Android phones in the US. In other countries, handsets made by\u00a0Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi also preload their devices with the apps.<\/p>\n<p>Both of the pre-installed apps fail to provide app-specific privacy policies that explain what data gets collected, and when a request is made through Google Takeout for the account data linked to the apps used for testing, Google did not provide any of the telemetry data observed by researchers.<\/p>\n<p>Google Messages takes message content and generates a SHA256 hash which is created by an algorithm that maps the readable content and transforms it into an alphanumeric digest. A portion of the has is then transmitted to Google\u2019s Clearcut logger and Firebase Analytics. In theory, some believe that shorter messages may be able to be recovered by reverse-engineering the hash sent to Google.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Leith told The Register:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m told by colleagues that yes, in principle this is likely to be possible. The hash includes a hourly timestamp, so it would involve generating hashes for all combinations of timestamps and target messages and comparing these against the observed hash for a match \u2013 feasible I think for short messages given modern computing power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2022\/03\/21\/google_messages_gdpr\/\">the Register here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter\u00a0<\/i><i><a class=\"x5l\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/lucasnolan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external\">@LucasNolan<\/a>\u00a0<\/i><i>or contact via secure email at the address\u00a0<a class=\"x5l\" href=\"mailto:lucasnolan@protonmail.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external\">lucasnolan@protonmail.com<\/a><\/i><i><\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent research paper reveals that Google\u2019s Messages and Dialer apps on Android smartphones have been sending user data back to the Masters of the Universe without notice or user<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1396372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}