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Google is rolling out some important changes that will make it easier for people who use their services to control their data.

They’re starting with their most widely used service, which is search.  In the weeks ahead, it will be easier than ever for users to delete their search history, on both PC and Android devices.

The official company announcement reads, in part, as follows:

“Today, we’re making it easier for you to make decisions about your data directly within the Google products you use every day, starting with Search.  Without ever leaving Search, you can now review and delete your recent Search activity, get quick access to the most relevant privacy controls in your Google Account, and learn more about how Search works with your data.

For example, to control the ads you see when you search, we give you access to your Ad Settings.  Additionally, you can access your Activity Controls to decide what information Google saves to your account and uses to make Search and other Google services faster, smarter, and more useful.”

As things stand now, the only way it’s possible to access this kind of information and see how Google uses your data is by using your Google Account.  The coming change makes it substantially easier, and Search is just the tip of the iceberg.  Next year, similar changes will be coming to Google Maps, with other services following behind those two.

This is good news, and the early response from privacy advocates has been positive.  Of course, the jury will still be out until we see the new implementation in action. However, based on the announcement, these changes represent a big step forward that will put more control in the hands of the individual user. That can’t be seen as anything other than a positive development.

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Security in the Android ecosystem is awful.  There’s just no other word to describe it.

In large part, the blame for that can be placed at the feet of Google.  Although they have succeeded in creating a wildly successful platform, their management of OEM devices (in particular, security updates for them) have been virtually nonexistent.

This has led to a situation where many device manufacturers don’t bother to push critical updates at all.  It costs money to do so, and until now, there hasn’t been a downside for failing to.  That, however, is about to change.

Recently, Google announced some big changes coming to their OEM agreements that would require Android device manufacturers to roll out security updates on a regular basis.

The company offered few details when the announcement was made, but since that time, an unverified copy of the new contract was leaked and obtained by The Verge.  It sheds some additional light on what’s coming.

Specifically, the new agreement requires OEMs to regularly schedule updates for any device launched after January 31, 2018 if that device has been activated by more than 100,000 users.  OEMs will be required to provide security updates for a minimum of two years.

In addition to that, they must make updates that address security vulnerabilities available to their customers no more than 90 days after the patch is released.  Taken together these two pieces of information point to the fact that OEMs will be required to issue quarterly updates to their customers, at a minimum.

It’s a good move and one that’s long overdue.  When this new agreement becomes official corporate policy, it will have an almost immediate, profound impact on security in the Android ecosystem.  While it’s far from a perfect solution, it represents a very good beginning.

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If you take a lot of photos with your Android device, you’re probably constantly on the lookout for a better way to organize them and access them.  That’s exactly what the authors of the malicious app called “The Album, by Google Photos” are hoping for.

The app put in a brief appearance on the Microsoft store, where it claimed to be from Google but it’s clearly not.  Unfortunately, the authors have gone to great lengths to make it appear legitimate, and as such, it has been downloaded and installed an alarming number of times.

When this app is installed and run for the first time, users are presented with a (legitimate) Google sign in page.  It is not known whether the authors of the app siphon user login credentials from this page, but it’s certainly possible. So if you have installed the app but haven’t run it yet, don’t log in.

Once you’re logged in, the app will connect to a malicious URL and download a configuration file.  Using the information contained in the config file, it will begin running in the background, displaying ads invisibly and then clicking on them, earning revenue for the app’s creators and slowing your Android device to a crawl in the process.

Note that the authors were careful, but only to a point.  Although the ads themselves are invisible, if those ads have an audio component, the user will hear the sounds associated with the ad, although of course, they won’t have any clear indication of where the sounds are coming from.  This is, in fact, how researchers became aware of the malicious nature of the app.

If you’ve downloaded this app, please uninstall it immediately.  Doing so will improve your device’s performance and stop those sounds that have no apparent source from troubling you further.

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If you’re one of the relatively few people who use Google+ in something other than an Enterprise setting, be advised that the clock is ticking.  Google has just announced that they’re sunsetting the service.  It will be going offline for consumers at some point over the next ten months.

The reasons for their decision are complex.  In part, it stems from the fact that the company readily acknowledges that it has “low usage and engagement,” which is underscored by the fact that 90 percent of Google+ user sessions last less than five seconds.

Another major component driving the decision is that the company suffered serious pushback when it revealed a previously undisclosed security flaw that exposed users’ profile data.  The company patched the issue in March of this year (2018), but the company’s long delay in going public with the flaw didn’t sit well with Google+’s user base.

Note that the company plans to continue offering Google+ for Enterprise customers to facilitate intra- and inter-company communications. In fact, they plan to roll out a raft of new features in the year ahead.

Google also recently announced other changes. Pending API changes, one new feature will limit developers’ access to data on Android devices and user Gmail accounts. Also, contact interaction data will soon be off limits, as will call logs and SMS permissions.

There are changes coming to Gmail itself as well, where developers will be sorely limited in how much access they have to user emails.

As Ben Smith (the company’s VP of engineering) explains, “Only apps directly enhancing email functionality–such as email clients, email backup services and productivity services (e.g., CRM and mail merge services)–will be authorized to access this data.”

Any developer who currently has this level of access can expect a security assessment and agree to the company’s new rules.  We’ll provide more details as they become available, but broadly speaking, these are good changes that will enhance data security for the company’s legions of users.

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Google is making a small but pivotal change as it relates to calls placed to 911 operators.  Having recently finalized a complex partnership with RapidSOS and West (two emergency technology companies) and T-Mobile, Google will now send location data from its “Emergency Location Service” when an Android user places a 911 call.

If the caller is a T-Mobile customer, the information will be passed along via the carrier. Where 911 call centers use RapidSOS, Google will send the location data via the technology company.  In the US Virgin Islands, Google has made the same arrangement with the Emergency Tech company, West.

While the announcement may raise some surprised eyebrows, the change has been in the works for more than a year. Google has spent much of that time testing.  Their findings were that the location data Google sent over was more accurate and arrived more quickly than the data the 911 call centers had been getting previously.

Not to be outdone, Apple announced in June of this year that it was developing a similar service for iOS users, and that beginning with iOS 12, Apple devices would automatically send location data to emergency call centers when users dial 911.

Even privacy advocates agree that this is generally a good move, and it’s one of the growing number of instances where smart use of technology can save lives.  Anything we can do to give our nation’s emergency call centers an edge is an important change. Currently, those call centers take an average of 140,000 calls a day, so this is by no means a trivial issue.

Kudos to both Google and Apple for taking bold action on this issue.  While we may not like the idea of having our location data shared, in this particular instance, it certainly seems like a smart play.

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Google has recently made some changes and improvements to its G-Suite. It introduces new tools designed to allow managers and admins greater visibility into how the people in their organizations use the G-Suite.

Currently, the “Work Insight” tool is available in beta and displays information on how G-Suite is deployed at the team level.

While this will be a boon to all organizations, it will be especially valuable for organizations moving from legacy tools to the G-Suite.  It will also serve to shine a light on teams or individual employees who could benefit from additional training on specific applications and provide valuable information on cross-team collaborations.

Where collaboration is concerned, the thinking is that admins would be able to see, for example, how many members of a sales team are working collaboratively with the marketing department. They could also see whether that collaboration is happening via face to face meetings or via co-created documents.

In addition to the Work Insight tool, Google also announced the availability of the G-Suite Security Center, which is an investigative tool that provides admins with a dashboard they can use to monitor a variety of security metrics.

The two big advantages to the new Investigation tool are:

It gives admins the power to scale an incident response as needed, up to and including scaling it across an entire domain

It adds integrated remediation to the detection and prevention capabilities already available to admins in the G-Suite.

Taken together, these changes should make life much easier for both managers and admins, providing better data which can be transformed into hard-hitting business information.  If you use the G-Suite at all, be sure to check out these new tools at your next available opportunity.  Both are excellent additions.

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Google scored a major coup in the auto industry. They just inked a deal that will put the Android OS in every car made by the global auto alliance Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi. It sold a staggering 10.6 million vehicles around the world last year.

The tech giant has struggled to get its foot in the door, primarily because auto makers have been hesitating on handing over the keys to their Infotainment and other computerized systems, in fear of being shut out of the data collected by those systems.

It’s a fair complaint and a valid concern, but Google has been working hard to build trust in the auto world and has taken a variety of approaches.

Their first move was to build an OS called “Android Auto” which mirrors the functionality of the Android OS but offers scaled down functionality which means it falls well short of “Android running on a car.”

Having gained some ground with that approach, they next introduced Android Automotive, which is essentially the entire Android OS, geared specifically for vehicular use.  They showed off their work last year at the 2018 I/O Tech conference, and their persistence paid off.

It’s a big win on all fronts.  The automakers win by retaining access to their data, while handing off the software function to a company with a long history of getting it right.

Google wins because it expands the Android ecosystem in a whole new way. Consumers win because it offers a seamless (and improved) user experience and makes it easier for an auto owner to sync their Android device to their car.

Google also wins because they get access to all the data generated by the in-auto OS after gaining permission from the user.  Plus, having scored a partnership with one major auto alliance, others will surely follow, which will further expand the tech giant’s footprint.

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