According to a new study published on Tuesday, Google has got the great capability to collect privacy-related data which seems to be nearly impossible to escape the tech giant in the course of normal online activity.

The study was done by Vanderbilt University computer science professor Douglas Schmidt and was written on pages covering 55 pages. According to the study, if a smartphone running on Google’s Android operating system is kept idle with its Chrome browser open, it sends data communications to the servers belonging to Google for as much as 14 times per hour. And if Google’s device is not used or its services are limited to data collection, the advertising network of the tech giant enable it to collect some data, the study says.

The special case study helps to understand how Google is able to use its techniques on multiple aspects to collect data through its multiple services viz., Hangouts chats, YouTube and Maps as well as DoubleClick Ad Network. The study was funded by Digital Content Next which is a lobbying group that represents the digital publishing industry of which The Washington Post is a member. The organization is a frequent critic of Google. Previously, the group heavily criticized Google due to it lacking moderation of content on YouTube along with the company’s dominance side by side with Facebook off the online advertising industry.

“These products are able to collect user data through a variety of techniques that may not be easily graspable by a general user,” Schmidt wrote in the paper’s conclusion. “A major part of Google’s data collection occurs while a user is not directly engaged with any of its products.”

From the Google side, a question was raised about the credibility of the study done.

“This report is commissioned by a professional DC lobbyist group, and written by a witness for Oracle in their ongoing copyright litigation with Google. So, it’s no surprise that it contains wildly misleading information,” the company said.

The report about the study comes at a time when Google is facing intense criticism along with increased scrutiny over the issue of it collecting location information after an Associated Press investigation that helped in revealing that even after turning off the “location history” setting will not deprive Google of its crucial data of locations of its users. After the report, two men in California filed lawsuits with allegations that Google had, in fact, cheated on them about the company’s reach over its ability to track things.

When the company was inquired about some specific points that were being considered to be misleading, Google directed The Washington Post to see its already provided descriptions of how the incognito mode works and the Chrome browser records and tracks all of the information by saying that it does get any kind of data from anonymous activity from users’ Google accounts once they sign in. In case of Incognito mode usage, the Chrome browser does record and track information but, in this mode, the anonymous activity is not linked with people’s Google accounts once they sign in. And all the information is deleted once the user stops using the incognito mode.

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