Despite its reputation as a data hog, Google has long been working hard on adding more privacy features to the Android ecosystem. Android 11 introduced the concept oftemporary permissions for apps, so they only access your data when needed. In the following year, Google enabledapproximate location sharingto protect your privacy. Well,Android 14is a few months away, and it tackles the issue of location data sharing practices.
Many apps have access to location data — some for their own purposes, while others share it with third parties. With Android 14, Google wants to push Android developers to be more transparent about how exactly location data is used. Asannounced in the Android 14 Beta 2 blog post, when the location permission prompt shows up, you now get a warning when an app’s Play Store listing states that it may share data with third parties.
Expert Android feature researcher Mishaal Rahman already gave us a look of how thenew data safety section for permissionslook like inAndroid 14 Developer Preview 1. It helps developers share how they intend to use the location data captured, including for marketing and advertising.
The information is pulled from the Data Safety section under the corresponding app’s Play Store listing, which wasintroduced last year. This means app devs just need to keep their Play Store listing up to date with data collection practices, and Android automatically condenses them into user-facing highlights seen when setting up app permissions. Such an inclusion makes it convenient for Android users as well, because you won’t need to visit the Play Store every time you suspect an app of a privacy infraction.
Android 14 will also notify you of any changes to the developer’s location data collection practices. The alert should show up as a notification once per month. We all run hundreds of apps on our Android devices, and notifications for individual changes could quickly become a pain. So, a monthly bulletin of sorts seems like the ideal middle path here.
With thepublic Beta 2 build rolling outin the wake ofGoogle I/O’s keynote address, we can all see this new feature. It is available underSettings->Security & privacy->Privacy, labeled asData sharing updates for location. At the developer conference, the company clarified the additional information is available for the location permission now, but will come to other permissions as well in the future.
