Google Latitude "fundamentally flawed"

 

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By Dawinderpal Sahota

Posted on 6 Feb 2009 at 11:08

A human rights group has slammed Google's new tracking service as "fundamentally flawed", claiming it could endanger the privacy of users.

Privacy International (PI) says that Google's new service lacks adequate safeguards to protect Latitude users from being covertly opted-in to the service. According to PI, the danger arises when somebody gains physical access to a user's phone and enables Latitude without the owner's knowledge.

The human rights group listed a number of scenarios in which this could be achieved:

• An employer provides staff with Latitude-enabled phones on which a reciprocal sharing agreement has been enabled, but does not inform staff of this action or that their movements will be tracked.
• A parent or friend gives a user a mobile phone, without disclosing that the phone has been Latitude-enabled.
• A partner, friend or other person gains access to an unattended phone and enables Latitude without the other person's knowledge.

"Many people will see Latitude as a cool product, but the reality is that Google has yet again failed to deliver strong privacy and security. The company has a long way to go before it can capture the trust of phone users," says Simon Davies, director of PI.

"As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends. The dangers to a user's privacy and security are as limitless as the imagination of those who would abuse this technology."

Far-fetched scenarios

However, Google has hit back at PI's allegations, claiming that most of the scenarios defined are far fetched.

"The first one would certainly be illegal under UK retention laws," Anthony House, communications and public affairs officer at Google tells PC Pro. "Employers wouldn't be allowed to do that legally without notifying their employees and doing it in a proportionate matter."

He added that Google Latitude already has built-in safety notifications on Blackberry devices and will be running safety notifications on all mobile platforms by the end of next week.

Google also claims that Latitude has several built-in controls to protect users' positional data, and that users must undertake around six steps to confirm, and reconfirm, that a friend or family member can track their location.