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You are giving Google way too much credit here. Google collects your location by default. I know so because I bought an Android phone just this month. Here is

You are giving Google way too much credit here. Google collects your location by default. I know so because I bought an Android phone just this month. Here is the setup screen, shown with default settings. [1] Google encourages developers to use the Play Services SDK for location services. This means that it is impossible to provide your location to just one app (say, Lyft) without also providing it to Google. [2] You can disable location services and Google will still find ways to monitor your location. For example, if you use gmail, Google will read any flight and hotel confirmations emails. It does this by default. [3] Install Google Trips and it will show you a list of every city you've been in. They collect your location so much they even find ways to do it by accident. [4] > I can't think of any other company that goes to such great lengths to protect user data as much as Goog does Better protection is to not collect it in the first place. For example, Apple Maps doesn't have a sign-in, and its server requests are associated with randomized rotating IDs, not your user account. Directions are broken up into multiple segments with different identifiers so that Apple can't reconstruct your trip. > Certainly you'll never see anything like private employees tracking their spouses using Google's data Old but it happened. [5] [1] https://imgur.com/a/XOY7g https://imgur.com/a/XOY7g [2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/12/turn_off_location_services_go_ahead_says_google_well_still_track_you/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/12/turn_off_location_se... [3] https://imgur.com/a/c7xeF https://imgur.com/a/c7xeF [4] https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locations-even-when-location-services-are-disabled/ https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio... [5] http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...

izacus 9y ago
> Google encourages developers to use the Play Services SDK for location services. This means that it is impossible to provide your location to just one app (say, Lyft) without also providing it to Google. [2] This is a straight up lie. Yes, Google encourages fused location because it provides better experience (it bootstraps location via cell towers / bluetooth / wifi which requires data from Google servers). However it does NOT make it "impossible" to directly request data from location services on the phone which DOES NOT go through Google servers. Please don't lie. > For example, Apple Maps doesn't have a sign-in, and its server requests are associated with randomized rotating IDs, not your user account. Directions are broken up into multiple segments with different identifiers so that Apple can't reconstruct your trip. Apple location services use pretty much the exact same system to provide fused location - they still call back to Apple servers to request information about your neighbouring wifis / cell towers which leaks your location to their cloud as well. Plus, Apple will sell out iCloud data of their customers to Chinese government (which makes me wonder if they're selling it out to NSA as well).
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  >However it does NOT make it "impossible" to directly request data from location services on the phone which DOES NOT go through Google servers. Please don't lie. Can a Lyft user disable fused location and force Lyft to request location data directly without going through Google? I'm not an Android user so this is not a rhetorical question. By the way, "lying" is to _knowingly_ make a false statement.

izacus 9y ago

> Google encourages developers to use the Play Services SDK for location services. This means that it is impossible to provide your location to just one app (say, Lyft) without also providing it to Google. [2] This is a straight up lie. Yes, Google encourages fused location because it provides better experience (it bootstraps location via cell towers / bluetooth / wifi which requires data from Google servers). However it does NOT make it "impossible" to directly request data from location services on the phone which DOES NOT go through Google servers. Please don't lie. > For example, Apple Maps doesn't have a sign-in, and its server requests are associated with randomized rotating IDs, not your user account. Directions are broken up into multiple segments with different identifiers so that Apple can't reconstruct your trip. Apple location services use pretty much the exact same system to provide fused location - they still call back to Apple servers to request information about your neighbouring wifis / cell towers which leaks your location to their cloud as well. Plus, Apple will sell out iCloud data of their customers to Chinese government (which makes me wonder if they're selling it out to NSA as well).

fauigerzigerk 9y ago
>However it does NOT make it "impossible" to directly request data from location services on the phone which DOES NOT go through Google servers. Please don't lie. Can a Lyft user disable fused location and force Lyft to request location data directly without going through Google? I'm not an Android user so this is not a rhetorical question. By the way, "lying" is to _knowingly_ make a false statement.