4 ms·

Because if you turn it off in one place, it just starts happening in another: Yah. I disabled Google Maps tracking, then Google Search started notifying me abo

Because if you turn it off in one place, it just starts happening in another: Yah. I disabled Google Maps tracking, then Google Search started notifying me about places I was near.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
It's not Google Maps that's doing the tracking. He turned off notifications in Google Maps, not location history, which does the actual tracking that other apps consume. He agreed to location tracking when he first set up the phone because the first run setup explicitly asks whether he wants that on or off.
- fixermark 9y ago
  A harder, deeper question, is whether the average user is informed enough about "location history" to know whether they want that on or off, and whose responsibility it should be to inform them. ... as a wise man once observed, people talk a long game about how important their privacy is, but then empirically, researchers continue to discover you can get people to divulge a lot of personal information for a Snickers bar, if not less (survey-takers who just stand around in malls and ask people to fill out clipboards are an example of this---and while they are a dying breed, they're a dying breed because it's cheaper now to collect that information online, not because people have gotten cagier about divulging it).
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    Google are miles ahead of the other big players in terms of transparency and user control. They actively prompt users to review their privacy settings. They provide a plain-English guide to what data they collect and a simple process to choose your privacy settings. I do find Google's level of data collection a bit creepy, but I also don't see how they could reduce the amount of data they collect without reducing the quality of their service. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6227261 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6227261 https://privacy.google.com/your-data.html https://privacy.google.com/your-data.html https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup
    - DrScump 9y ago
      They actively prompt users to review their privacy settings. And yet I've found with multiple Android updates on multiple devices, they can reset things like Location Services back to "On/Fine" and othere things like enable NFC without telling you that it's happened.

Because if you turn it off in one place, it just starts happening in another: Yah. I disabled Google Maps tracking, then Google Search started notifying me about places I was near.

lern_too_spel 9y ago

It's not Google Maps that's doing the tracking. He turned off notifications in Google Maps, not location history, which does the actual tracking that other apps consume. He agreed to location tracking when he first set up the phone because the first run setup explicitly asks whether he wants that on or off.

fixermark 9y ago
A harder, deeper question, is whether the average user is informed enough about "location history" to know whether they want that on or off, and whose responsibility it should be to inform them. ... as a wise man once observed, people talk a long game about how important their privacy is, but then empirically, researchers continue to discover you can get people to divulge a lot of personal information for a Snickers bar, if not less (survey-takers who just stand around in malls and ask people to fill out clipboards are an example of this---and while they are a dying breed, they're a dying breed because it's cheaper now to collect that information online, not because people have gotten cagier about divulging it).
- jdietrich 9y ago
  Google are miles ahead of the other big players in terms of transparency and user control. They actively prompt users to review their privacy settings. They provide a plain-English guide to what data they collect and a simple process to choose your privacy settings. I do find Google's level of data collection a bit creepy, but I also don't see how they could reduce the amount of data they collect without reducing the quality of their service. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6227261 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6227261 https://privacy.google.com/your-data.html https://privacy.google.com/your-data.html https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup
  - DrScump 9y ago
    They actively prompt users to review their privacy settings. And yet I've found with multiple Android updates on multiple devices, they can reset things like Location Services back to "On/Fine" and othere things like enable NFC without telling you that it's happened.