THERE’S no where to run, and no where to hide. Unless you disable your Android smartphone, that is.

Google has built an astonishingly effective system to track those who carry a smartphone run by its Android operating system.

The company relies very heavily on knowing everywhere you go so it can best target you with ads. In fact it wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.

An investigation by the Associated Press found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so. Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed the findings.

Google’s support page on the subject states: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”

But that isn’t true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.

For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot — and save it to your Google account.

It comes after News Corp Australia reported on the immense scope of Google’s tracking capabilities in May this year.

The information fed back to Google includes “activity logs” in which the phone’s operating system working in the background provide a guess as to how the phone user is travelling such as walking, driving, riding a bike as well as a confidence reading.

It also includes barometric pressure readings so it can work out, for example, which level of a shopping mall you are on. By combining this with your coordinates Google knows which shops you have visited.

The device constantly sends all this data back to Google servers.

Experts from tech giant Oracle recently visited Australia and met with the ACCC as part of its inquiry into digital platforms and their affect on media and journalism. The Oracle team also met with journalists in May.

They demonstrated how Google collects masses of additional location data from phones that don’t even have web services or apps open. The data is transmitted even if there’s no SIM card, sent via the little-known activity logs.

Google calls these logs “location services”, which is different to location history and is opt-out, not opt-in.

MORE: Google tracks where you shop, even without location services

Google — which was recently found to be tracking Android users by collecting the addresses of nearby mobile towers even if all location services were off — says it is being perfectly clear.

“There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people’s experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the AP. “We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.” To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information.

Called “Web and App Activity” and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.

When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving “Web & App Activity” on and turning “Location History” off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the “timeline,” its visualisation of your daily travels.