Hard to keep the tech giants off your track

The ACCC has first-hand experience of how difficult it is to block Google tracking you.

Blocking Google’s ability to track you via a phone is tough — unless you give up carrying it around.

Just ask the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission. Its interim report on its digital platform inquiry recounts a staff member trying to extract their location from Google’s grip.

The first step is to select Google’s privacy check-up function. “However, the officer found a number of design features that either introduced confusion or may nudge users against opting out of location tracking, lessening the effectiveness of the innovation,” the ACCC says.

They staff member couldn’t turn off location history altogether. “The options provided are only to turn location history on or to pause it,” the ACCC says, adding there is no explanation of the difference between the two.

Choosing to pause location history takes five clicks. The ACCC says every additional click and page change has the potential to nudge the user against making any change. They encountered distractions that diverted them from their task, such as a pop-up box to “explore your timeline”.

Users have to scroll through three screens and choose a less prominent “learn more” link to change the location setting.

The ACCC’s interim report finds consumers don’t have effective opt-outs that give them meaningful controls over digital platforms’ collection, use and disclosure.

It warns that digital platforms may be collecting data about an individual’s vulnerabilities (for example, illnesses). This places people at risk of being targeted with inappropriate products or scams, being discriminated against or being excluded inappropriately from markets.

It says people could face discrimination over their willingness to pay as well as for their sex, race or sexual orientation, the report says. And they could be unfairly excluded from products and services. Consumers with a low socio-economic background would be harmed if online profiling distinguishes between high-value and low-value customers, particularly in essential-services markets.

It’s not just Google that is a problem with user tracking. Apps compound the problem by collecting user data and selling it.

In 2017 researchers at Yale Law School’s Privacy Lab in Connecticut found 25 trackers hidden in Google Play apps such as Uber, Tinder, Skype, Snapchat and Spotify. It says trackers vary in their features and purpose but are primarily used for targeted ads, behavioural analytics and location tracking.

Privacy Lab says more than 75 per cent of the more than 300 apps analysed contain the signatures of trackers.

Whether the ACCC tackles the likes of Google over third-party app tracking remains to be seen. The ACCC says it plans to recommend greater notification requirements when the personal information of Australians is collected or disclosed. It also suggests an opt-in option that stops tech companies from collecting information for targeted advertising purposes unless consumers expressly opt in.