Google Sued For Transmitting Smartphone IDs To Developers
- by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, May 5, 2011
Four Texas residents have sued Google for violating their privacy by allegedly transmitting their mobile devices' unique identifying numbers to app developers.
As with similar lawsuits against Apple, the consumers argue that Google violates a host of laws, including the federal computer fraud law, by enabling Android app developers to track users through a unique identifier.
"A user can't opt out or delete it, since it is always sent as part of the person's smartphone activities," the consumers allege in papers filed this week in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. "It's not anonymous data -- it's an exact ID that's unique to each physical device, and if merged with GPS data, it provides unlimited advertising opportunities."
The consumers -- Beverly Levine, Phillip Hall, Erin Hillman and Theodore Spradley -- all say that they have downloaded apps from Google's Android store. They argue that even though Google's policy is to prohibit app developers from obtaining data without users' consent, Google doesn't police compliance.
A report published last year said that the majority of the most popular 101 apps for iPhone and Android phones sent their unique identifiers to other companies.
Google imposes "illusory contractual obligations" on Android app developers rather than monitor them, the consumers allege. "Users rely on Google to allow only those [applications] found safe and appropriate."
The Web users are seeking class-action status. Their attorney, Joseph Malley, also has filed privacy lawsuits against other companies, including Apple, Facebook and Netflix.
In recent months, Apple has been hit with several lawsuits alleging that the company violates users' privacy by allowing app developers for the iPhone and iPad app to obtain users' device identifiers. Those cases were recently consolidated into one potential class-action, pending in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Web users in all of these cases will likely face hurdles in proving that they suffered any economic harm, due to the alleged privacy violations. Some federal judges have recently dismissed privacy lawsuits, ruling that the Web users who were suing couldn't claim that they suffered any economic injury.
Last week, for instance, U.S. District Court Judge George Wu in the Central District of California dismissed a lawsuit against Specific Media, which was accused of violating the federal computer fraud law by using hard-to-delete Flash cookies to track people. Wu ruled that the Web users hadn't shown they lost any money as a result of the tracking.
In a separate case, however, U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton in the Northern District of California allowed a lawsuit to go forward against application developer RockYou for an alleged security breach that exposed users' email addresses and passwords.
It's almost as if the notion of the Media Access Control identifier, MAC address to those unfamiliar, was a new thing and hadn't been around since, I dunno, Xerox? Ethernet?
People just don't get it. Just because something is "unique" doesn't make it personally identifying. And what is really ironic is that every single network capable machine we can possibly use right now transmits it's MAC address with EVERY packet. That's the network card on your computer, laptop, mobile device, hell, Fisher-Price Farm Animal Sound simulator if when the 'cow goes moo' it does so over some sort of network.
This mobile privacy stuff - is a sham. How do people suppose that mobile developers are supposed to have any idea of how their apps are engaged with out in the wild if they can't do simple things like count the number of unique users, etc?
And since when does providing 'unlimited advertising opportunities' constitute a violation of anyone's privacy?
It's so awesome that we can't feed or educate everyone, but nonetheless our tax dollars and courts are being overrun by Chicken Littles who want to cry 'privacy violation!' every time some pundit convinces them to do so.