![]() At a Google Marketing Live summit in July, Google executives unveiled a new tool called "local campaigns" that dynamically uses ads to boost in-person store visits. The company is pushing further into such location-aware tracking to drive ad revenue, which rose 20 percent last year to $95.4 billion. ![]() Since 2014, Google has let advertisers track the effectiveness of online ads at driving foot traffic, a feature that Google has said relies on user location histories. ![]() With Location History off, Google Maps and other apps store your whereabouts in a section of your account called "My Activity," not "Location History." The iPhone text is technically true if potentially misleading. On Android, the popup explains that "places you go with your devices will stop being added to your Location History map." On the iPhone, it simply reads, "None of your Google apps will be able to store location data in Location History." Warnings when you're about to turn Location History off via Android and iPhone device settings are more difficult to interpret. and associated information, like location." That popup states that, when active, the setting "saves the things you do on Google sites, apps, and services. Google offers additional information in a popup that appears if you re-activate the "Web & App Activity" setting - an uncommon action for many users, since this setting is on by default. There the company notes that "some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other Google services, like Search and Maps." Google offers a more accurate description of how Location History actually works in a place you'd only see if you turn it off - a popup that appears when you "pause" Location History on your Google account webpage. "It just really bothers me that it is not explicitly stated." "I am not opposed to background location tracking in principle," she said. But its attempts to do so revealed Google's tracking. The AP wasn't able to recreate Shankari's experience exactly. To demonstrate how powerful these other markers can be, the AP created a visual map of the movements of Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with Location history off, and shared a record of his Google account. You can see the stored location markers on a page in your Google account at, although they're typically scattered under several different headers, many of which are unrelated to location. You can delete these location markers by hand, but it's a painstaking process since you have to select them individually, unless you want to delete all of your stored activity. It does not stop Google's collection of other location markers. But leaving "Web & App Activity" on and turning "Location History" off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the "timeline," its visualization of your daily travels. When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. Called "Web and App Activity" and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account. ![]() To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information. "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." "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 said in a statement to the AP.
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