Google Location Data Led Police To The Wrong Suspect

The problem with a lot of services these days is that they tend to collect data on you. Most of the time, these companies claim that the data has been anonymized, meaning that any information that could trace the data back to you has been stripped, leaving only the contents, which for the most part the companies claim that they use it to improve on their services.

However, it seems that we are now getting a good example of what happens when that data is wrong. According to a report from NBC News, a Florida resident by the name of Zachary McCoy was wrongly suspected of a crime he did not commit, simply because of his Google location data that put him near the scene of the crime.

Police were seeking geofenced data on an area in a bid to get leads on a 2019 burglary. McCoy was wrongly suspected to be tied to the crime as he had used RunKeeper to keep track of his rides, and it so happens that he had cycled past the house three times in the span of an hour.

McCoy has since been cleared of any wrongdoing and suspicion, although like we said, this incident has since raised the issue of geofencing data warrants, which in this led to police wrongly suspecting an innocent person.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Google, Privacy