The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is investigating accusations Google is using as much as AU$580 million (NZ$626 million) worth of Australians' phone plan data annually to secretly track their movements.
ACCC chairman Rod Sims said he was briefed recently by US experts who had intercepted, copied and decrypted messages sent back to Google from mobiles running on the company's Android operating system.
The experts, from computer and software corporation Oracle, claim Google is draining roughly one gigabyte of mobile data monthly from Android phone users' accounts as it snoops in the background, collecting information to help advertisers.
A gig of data currently costs about AU$3.60-AU$4.50 (NZ$3.89-NZ$4.86) a month in Austalia. Given more than 10 million Aussies have an Android phone, if Google had to pay for the data it is said to be syphoning it would face a bill of between AU$445 million and AU$580 million (NZ$481 million - NZ$627 million) a year.
Google's privacy consent discloses that it tracks location "when you search for a restaurant on Google Maps". But it does not appear to mention the constant monitoring going on in the background even when Maps is not in use.
