Even if your GPS is disabled, Google will track your whereabouts “every 15 minutes.”

A recent report raises serious concerns about a new smartphone that may secretly collect personal information from users, including data about them and their exact whereabouts, without their consent or knowledge.

Researchers at Cybernews have found some disturbing practices involving this device to show how it continuously streams a hidden flow of data back into Google’s servers. That would imply that the phone is not just serving its basic purpose of communication but also transmitting information capable of divulging user privacy.

In conducting the investigation, the Cybernews team took a brand-new Pixel 9 Pro XL and set it up with a fresh Google account, keeping all default settings. This was to establish an environment in which they could intercept and analyze the data in transmission. They achieved this through the process termed “man-in-the-middle” interception, whereby they can easily read the data sent and received by the smartphone. To filter and organize incoming and outgoing data traffic, they employed the use of a proxy that utilizes an individual security certificate to decode and assess the communication. Unfortunately, rooting the phone for such access indeed lost the phone some of its features.

These are uncertain factors since the team did not look at how changes in the privacy and security settings that a user could make would change the situation. As the researchers also noticed, every 15 minutes, the device shoots packets of sensitive data to Google, which contains user location, email address, phone number, network status, and many other telemetry data. It doesn’t send data back to a single central location but, instead, sends it out to multiple Google endpoints. They include areas managing devices, enforcing policies, and grouping facial recognition data.

These findings would serve to indicate that users of this new phone are actually running a very considerable risk of having their personal information tracked and cataloged without any explicit approval being issued. And as technology continues to improve further, implications for user privacy continue to grow more convoluted and disturbing.

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