Google has butted heads with privacy for years and everyone within the community has their own opinion when it comes to this topic. Some believe Google is transparent and can do no harm. Some go the exact opposite way and will do whatever it takes to keep Google away from their personal data. And then there are those who fall somewhere in the gray area where they benefit from Google's services but are still wary about giving up their data. Google actually does a lot of work to give the user control of data collected on them and they will soon let users opt-out of three Google Pay privacy settings that are currently hidden.

If you watched the Google I/O 2019 keynote address then you likely heard the word "privacy" used a lot. Google is going as far as to use it as a key focus of their upcoming Android 10 Q update too. And let's face it, Google needs to do more when it comes to gaining trust with its users. This is especially true after the Android location history issue that recently popped up. Google Pay is the company's branded payment service which has evolved a bit over the years. With that change comes some new privacy issues as well, but three settings were first discovered to not be accessible from the app or the base website.

The URL you see above seems like it would take you to a specific section of the regular Google Pay settings page, but it's actually special. When you go to the regular Google Pay settings page without the special link (which happens to be this URL), you don't see those three privacy settings listed on the screen at all. There's not even a way to reach that page from the regular Google Pay settings area (at least as of writing this article). The image below shows you that once you access that special URL you are able to stop Google from sharing your Google Pay data with other 3rd-party companies.

Google Pay

Obviously, it's not ideal to have these important settings hidden away. Google released a statement on this situation and they are in the process of fixing it. Apparently, the current setup is due to a previous software update. Soon, it will be easy for everyone to use those settings and opt-out. Here is the full statement:

All users are currently able to access these privacy settings via the ‘Google Payments privacy settings page’ link in the Google Pay privacy notice. The different settings views described here are an issue resulting from a previous software update and we are working to fix this right away so that these privacy settings are always visible on pay.google.com.


Via: Bleeping Computer

Source: Google