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Holy shit. So my paranoia about turning off Google location tracking was completely well-founded, and way more quickly than I would have hoped. GDPR can't come
by dwaltrip 9y ago
Holy shit. So my paranoia about turning off Google location tracking was completely well-founded, and way more quickly than I would have hoped.
GDPR can't come soon enough...
- ams6110 9y agoYeah I'm typically not a very paranoid person but I only have location services on when I'm actually using Maps to navigate. My main reason is to squash the annoying notifications about "heavy traffic in your area" at 5:00pm. Yeah, I would never have guessed...
- inetknght 9y agoNow sit back and think about what else people get called paranoid for.
- dwaltrip 9y agoEhh. I am using the term paranioa a bit loosely. Post-snowden, it really wasn't very far fetched at all. But still upsetting.
- joering2 9y agoAny reliable source of your allegation that all phonecalls in USA are being recorded? As far as I know such dragnet is allowed only outside of USA.
- jonathanyc 9y agoEvery time this happens, the same people magically transform from saying “What, are you paranoid?” to “What, are you naive?” The NSA’s surveillance dragnet is a very different situation because they are a government agency, but you could see the same exact phenomenon happened when the Snowden revelations came out. “Do you really think the government cares enough to log all your phone calls? You must be paranoid.” became “Well, obviously the government does this. How could you not expect this?” in the blink of an eye.
- thinkingemote 9y agoI think both reactions are for psychological comfort. It is that it's comforting if someone else is in charge, in control in the face of chaos, and it's comforting to place trust in those above you and thus happily mock conspiracy theories.
- megy 9y ago> Every time this happens, I love these comments, you seem them all the time (Everytime this happens if you will). And they are phrased as though they are above questioning.
- muro 9y agoGoogle tells you regularly that you have it enabled - you get emails with your full history. How would anyone not know it's recorded?
- djrogers 9y agoI’ve never once received, nor heard anyone else who’s received such an email. Are my family and friends the anomaly or are you?
- cbr 9y agoThe email reminders I get look like: Subject: You are using Google Location Sharing to share your real-time location. Hi Jeff, To protect your privacy, we would like to remind you that you are sharing your real-time location using Google Location Sharing with [wife] and [close friend and housemate]. If you didn't enable this or want to stop sharing your location at any time, please go to your Google Location Sharing settings. Thanks, Google Location Sharing Team
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoSounds like this is a reminder that you're sharing your location history. People who just have it on (which means, "just" sharing with Google), do not get these notices.
- megy 9y agoThis isn't the same thing at all.
- cbr 9y agoBut it may be what the grandparent recalls receiving
- brerlapn 9y agoReplying to cbr/muro - those are emails about specific people that you have allowed to see your location data. The NC police are getting warrants for everyone in an area's location data. It doesn't matter if you've shared it - GPS, cell-tower data is passively collected by Google and then provided en masse to the police when subpoenaed. Nobody receives periodic emails from Google saying "you have your location services turned on [which we will nag the shit out of you about if you don't] and thus Google has a running log of everywhere you go [and if you happen to be in a jurisdiction that wipes it ass with the Fourth Amendment we'll also turn over all the data we've collected to the police]."
- petilon 9y agoYou live in Los Angeles (according to Google). How will GDPR help you? Companies such as Google and Facebook aren't going to implement European laws for their American customers!
- joering2 9y agoVPN settings - location - Europe - Germany. GDPR enabled.
- chmars 9y agoNot really, the GDPR is applicable to persons in the EU (not just in Europe) and not to persons using a VPN server in the EU. Anyway, the GSPR does not ban American-style surveillance in Europe. Most European countries have used the Snowden leaks as a blueprint to increase surveillance in almost every aspect, especially online and with many related obligations for Internet companies.
- walshemj 9y agoNot sure that pc plod in Europe gets the wide access that American cops do
- bertil 9y agoI’m not sure how other companies will implement it but I certainly expect most to bluntly use geo-IP to locate customers and apply GDPR-compliant practices without digging too much whether that particular customer is likely to lawyer-up. European services probably will blanket apply it to all their customers. It’s possible (if unlikely) that after a militant based in Europe but geo-IP located elsewhere by accident notices something unsavoury and complaints, that companies implements an “Are you based within the EU?” toggle in account settings to avoid headaches. For social services, I’m curious on how processes based on your friends’ will be implemented when your friends are partially in the EU and elsewhere. But I don’t expect this will be much harder than it currently is to circumvent, say, Netflix geo-blocks.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
- notahacker 9y agoLaw enforcement can triangulate location from a mobile phone signal via your celluar network provider with or without Google's help, and has been able to do so since the very beginning.
- ThrowawayR2 9y agoBingo, knowing the location of each phone at all times is intrinsic to how the cellular network works. The interesting question here is why law enforcement is going to Google instead of the cellular network providers directly? By definition, they're missing out on data from all non-Android phones.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lemming 9y agoFrom the top comment here: The precision is greatest when GPS is on, but less precise data from cell towers and WiFi sources is used almost any time a Google app is being used on an Android or non-Android phone. I haven't read the original article since the website doesn't work without off-domain scripts running, but I assume that's why - they do have data for iOS users running Google apps, and that data is often higher resolution than cell tower triangulation. I'd also assume they're getting the cell information as well and correlating the two.
- bigiain 9y agoThat's what the cops tell judges - and sometimes use that inaccurate assertion to lock up innocent people for a decade... https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-your-cell-phone-cant-tell-the-police https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-your-cell-phon... "On May 28th, Lisa Marie Roberts, of Portland, Oregon, was released from prison after serving nine and a half years for a murder she didn’t commit. A key piece of overturned evidence was cell-phone records that allegedly put her at the scene." If it's as accurate and straight forward as law enforcement tell us - how did _that_ happen?
- pmoriarty 9y agoI've taken to just not carrying a cell phone with me, or just keeping it off. I don't really need it most of the time, and I find the sense of privacy liberating.
- yorby 9y agoIf you are traveling in a modern car, they can be pretty bad too: http://archive.is/0VUAf http://archive.is/0VUAf
- shpx 9y agohttps://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout You're looking for "Location History".
- thomasahle 9y agoI don't think he wants a copy. I think he wants it deleted.
- lopmotr 9y agoWhy don't you want the police to be able to find your when there's a crime? What if you're the victim of a kidnapping? Or murder that goes unsolved because Google wouldn't tell them who did it?
- dwaltrip 9y agoMy main concerns are how such tools may facilitate automated injustice, as well as providing the means for heavy-handed political/intellectual influence and control.
- groby_b 9y agoThe incident rate of kidnappings is so low that it's not anywhere close to ranking in the first volume of "List of Things I Worry About". The government abusing data it collected on its citizens to silence dissenters, however, is something I've seen on a daily basis. And so, we set priorities.
- thomasahle 9y ago> GDPR can't come soon enough... GDPR was approved on 14 April 2016. Google appears to have been complying for a while, starting to remove search results year ago. I have heard of people getting a copy of all the data Google stored, but I haven't heard of location deletion requests yet. Will be interesting.
- bduerst 9y agoGoogle already allows you delete your account-linked location data: https://myactivity.google.com https://myactivity.google.com Just be aware that deletion isn't instant though. From the TOS: >We aim to maintain our services in a manner that protects information from accidental or malicious destruction. Because of this, after you delete information from our services, we may not immediately delete residual copies from our active servers and may not remove information from our backup systems.
- bertil 9y agoI believe that many on-line services are not allowed to delete user data for a significant period of time (because terrorism & child exploitation).
- htoooh 9y agoWaltreezy! Hope you're well buddy