In November 2017 Quartz investigative reporters discovered that since early 2017, Android phones had been collecting location information by triangulating the nearest cell towers, even when location services were disabled, no apps were running, and no carrier SIM card was installed in the phone. The information was used to manage Google’s “push” notifications and messages sent to users on their Android phones, enabling the company to track “whether an individual with an Android phone or running Google apps has set foot in a specific store, and use that to target the advertising a user subsequently sees.”

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 763