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Australian authorities launched an investigation into Google's massive data harvest from smartphones, which reportedly allows the search giant to track users' movements even with location services turned off. The investigations stem from findings made by the California-based software company Oracle, which revealed that Google was collecting up to one gigabyte of each users' monthly phone data to secretly trace their location. With the number of Android users in Australia around 10 million, if Google were to pay to collect their data, the price tag at current data costs would be somewhere between $432 and $540 million annually. According to experts from Oracle, Google collected this data to help advertisers. Concerned about the impact that both Google and Facebook have had on the advertising market, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (the ACCC) launched an inquiry. In a report recently presented to the ACCC and cited by The Australian, Oracle details the extent of access Google has to smartphone users' data... read more on our Forum