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For this only the notice that it's turned off comes up for me. Great. Alas it's Google that knows everywhere I've been https://google.com/maps/timeline?pb https

For this only the notice that it's turned off comes up for me. Great. Alas it's Google that knows everywhere I've been https://google.com/maps/timeline?pb https://google.com/maps/timeline?pb

danso 8y ago
To add on to this, if people are interested in their location data, they can download it as JSON via the Google Takeout function: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1 https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1
rococode 8y ago
Wow, they (Google) really keep everything.. They've still got my trip to Europe from 5 years ago on there, not sure how that's useful to them at this point haha.
- nunya213 8y ago
  They know you've traveled to Europe, they know all the places you went and how long you were in each one. How is that not useful?
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    They probably even know what carrier you used for your flight based on transit time between airports.
    - ReverseCold 8y ago
      Or just pull that information from the flight confirmation email that was sent to Gmail.
      - amatecha 8y ago
        Correct - they'll know your entire itinerary (and whoever else you traveled with) because of your hotel booking confirmations, too. Same with whatever events you bought tickets to. :)
      - joering2 8y ago
        From gmail they also have keys to yor website SSL, as majority of SSL cert providers will send those to admin email (form of verification that someone access admin/webmaster account) on file as form of validation (altho there are other options like CNAME in some providers)
        jlgaddis 8y ago
        They might have a copy of the signed certificate that the CA sent you via e-mail, but they certainly should not have a copy of the private key that goes along with it (unless you did something stupid like let someone else generate the private key for you).
  - kinsomo 8y ago
    >> Wow, they (Google) really keep everything.. They've still got my trip to Europe from 5 years ago on there, not sure how that's useful to them at this point haha. > They know you've traveled to Europe, they know all the places you went and how long you were in each one. How is that not useful? But how is deriving those facts from 5 year old location data actually useful to them? AFAIK, they don't try to drive "engagement" by inducing nostalgia with push notifications [1]. I don't really see the use of old data like that for ad-targeting beyond a coarse "travels internationally"-type categories that don't really require keeping the data around. [1] Remember when you were in Europe? Wasn't it fun? We were there too, following you. Please, please log on now to see what we tracked!
    - majormajor 8y ago
      > AFAIK, they don't try to drive "engagement" by inducing nostalgia with push notifications [1]. They definitely do this with Google Photos "revisit this day" stuff, but it seems just an engagement play than a direct monetization one.
    - jankassens 8y ago
      Did they go on a long distance vacation every year? They're probably a good target for travel ads. They're probably also in a higher income bracket then someone who's only going on local trips.
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      They know you're wealthy enough to travel to Europe. They know you might buy airplane tickets. They can show you ads for other international destinations. If nothing else, they can sell ads against you for "Category: Travelled to X place within the last Y years".
      - netsharc 8y ago
        Thought experiment: your phone could know you liked a particular tourist spot because you spent a lot of time there, and later on when you upload pictures from your DSLR to Google Photos, the system will notice that there are a lot of photos that are timestamped within the time range when you were at that tourist spot. And data mining can tell that people who like that tourist spot A in country X also liked tourist spot B in city G in country Y a lot, so, tourism board of city G/country Y, here's a good target for your ad. And not just tourist stuff. Data mining might even tell they like a particular brand of, I don't know, yoghurt, so let's sell some of that yoghurt!
- ebikelaw 8y ago
  They keep it because it's useful to you, not because it's useful to them. You're just looking at it too cynically.
  - choward 8y ago
    It could be useful to them in the future. You're just not looking at it cynically enough.
  - amatecha 8y ago
    How do you know it's not useful to them? How can we have any way to know definitively how our data is used?
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    You forgot /s
  - stevenicr 8y ago
    I must disagree. Spending some time thinking how this info is useful to the end user as opposed to the data watcher / holder. I believe that this data is exponentially less useful for the end user as it is for the persons adversaries. Cell phone companies for example may have legitimate reasons to keep location data for billing disputes for 60 days or so, but holding that data longer makes it available to all kinds of agencies, law enforcers and those with that kind of access who would abuse that access, marketing groups, divorce lawyers, accident attorneys, all kinds of possible things that are detrimental to the end user. The data companies profit from sharing this data, and it costs the end user. Whatever benefits one can come up with, I think the scale is obviously tipped in the "more useful against you" than "for you" direction when it comes to long term location storage.
    - ebikelaw 8y ago
      The phone company doesn't hold it for you on your behalf; they don't have some frontend where you can query and see it. Google does hold it on your behalf. It's used for you in Google Maps to surface places you regularly go over places you've never been. This is why "directions to the pizza place" works. Location history is also used to automatically deduce your home, work, or school location, so you can use a command like "navigate to school" with Android Auto, or get traffic alerts along your normal routes, just as examples.
- mtgx 8y ago
  You can delete and stop further (official) data gathering here: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
  - throwahey 8y ago
    The deceptive word here being, "delete".
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- hateful 8y ago
  I used this feature to figure out that my wife was cheating on me! So it was useful!
madeofpalk 8y ago
I'm surprised just how empty that is for me. While I don't have an Android phone, I do use Google Maps on my computer and iPhone quite a lot. It's got nothing for me. Maybe I turned something off ages ago and forgot?
- plttn 8y ago
  IIRC timeline/location history only generates from an Android device.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ebikelaw 8y ago
    That's not correct. Google location history also works with Google Maps and "the Google app" on iOS.
    - plttn 8y ago
      https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/4388034 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/4388034 >As of Google Maps version 3.2.1, you cannot turn on Location Reporting and History from the Google Maps app for iPhone and iPad. If you have Location History turned on from another Google app, like the Google app, the Google Maps app may still use Location History data stored in your Google account to give you better search results.
      - opless 8y ago
        The location data was initially part of Latitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Latitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Latitude, it went away for a while, appeared in the iOS Google Maps app, and then moved again to the google app. I use it for time tracking, time spent at clients sites, etc. It's not perfect, but perfectly good 95% of the time!
- leoalves 8y ago
driverdan 8y ago
You can turn off location history for Google too. I did it years ago. The maps timeline link shows nothing for me.
- bewl 8y ago
  A question still remains for me: Are you just flipping a bit by turning it off, or are you not actually reporting data?
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    I'd be really interested in hearing an answer on this from Googlers. Does switching all these settings off actually affect what data Google collects and stores about you, or does it just mean they hide it from you on the activity page?
  - denzil_correa 8y ago
    Considering that they look at IP addresses, it is a switch off for "GPS data"; not "location data".
- gerdesj 8y ago
  You can flip a widget that claims to do something. How do you know it actually does what you think it does? For example, it might simply mean that you no longer have access to your location history - which your experience documented here implies. That does not mean that the data is no longer there or being added to. Have you read the small print? Nearly appropriate anecdote: For a customer, the SNMP "public" community has been deemed a security issue. The GUI for three of their systems showed that the SNMP agent was not configured, let alone running. $snmpwalk -v2c -c public w.x.y.z enterprises from my PC says otherwise. Here we have a saying: "it does what it says on the tin" to imply a form of integrity (a quote from an advert, funnily enough.) Not all tins tell the complete truth.
  - Liquid_Fire 8y ago
    While it's possible that Google may be keeping the data after you ask them to delete it, that would be a violation of the GDPR.
aldoushuxley001 8y ago
Surprisingly the default setting for both Google and Facebook's location history is off for me, so I guess they haven't been collecting my location data after all?
- fireattack 8y ago
  I can't even figure how to turn it on in FB. Maybe you can only do so on mobile/App?
colemickens 8y ago
Facebook's actually says it's disabled? Mine was virtually empty (I refuse to install mobile apps beyond Maps/SMS/etc), but it doesn't indicate that it's disabled. I'd love to disable it fully... As far as I can tell, there's no "disable" control on that page (only "Delete All Location Data") and there's no global toggle on my Account -> Privacy page. Wow. I never cease to be amazed at how many hoops they make you jump through. NO, Facebook, I will not install your awful app just to disable Location tracking. https://i.imgur.com/sUR3FU5.png https://i.imgur.com/sUR3FU5.png. Can't wait until they silently start scraping my browser's location and I have to know to login and delete that data regularly.
Keloo 8y ago
The google maps data showing makes sense (you're using maps, so why not offering the timeline of places you visited on maps). But the FB location history to me is just out of the blue. FB was meant to be just a social network, why the heck do they need that information, I thought FB just connect me with my friends (and do things related to that). It's a bit abusive imho. P.S. I'm aware of all the scandals, regulations, profile shadowing etc.
- reubenmorais 8y ago
  > you're using maps, so why not offering the timeline of places you visited on maps That functionality is tied in with Google Assistant as well, so if you have it enabled it tracks your Android phone all the time, not just when you're using Google Maps.
- em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
  > "why the heck do they need that information" So that they can make money so that they can provide the social network services for free to everyone, so that they can actually have a large social network.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    They make money by selling ads. I'm not sure why storing users' entire location history helps with this.
    - em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
      so they can make more effective ads.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  > so why not offering the timeline of places you visited on maps Because I don't want them to store it. It's ridiculously user-hostile and privacy-intrusive that Google maps won't even save your searches if you have location history turned off. If only my phone had some sort of area where you could store data locally, then maybe I wouldn't have to keep typing the same thing over and over again in Maps. One can only dream.
AHTERIX5000 8y ago
I've already disabled location history yet Google Maps continuosly keeps asking to review nearby places and take photos even when I haven't used the app in a long time. So it clearly polls location once in a while just to ask those questions (and log everything of course), very irritating. I know I can disable notifications but I'm not sure if it would disable polling in the background. I guess the only way is to keep location toggled off completely.
- yurishimo 8y ago
  It might be using WiFi to determine your location. Logging each SSID and comparing them to a known database of businesses in the area where you live.
ForFreedom 8y ago
Location history is OFF for both Google and Facebook for me

For this only the notice that it's turned off comes up for me. Great. Alas it's Google that knows everywhere I've been https://google.com/maps/timeline?pb https://google.com/maps/timeline?pb

danso 8y ago

To add on to this, if people are interested in their location data, they can download it as JSON via the Google Takeout function: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1 https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1

rococode 8y ago

Wow, they (Google) really keep everything.. They've still got my trip to Europe from 5 years ago on there, not sure how that's useful to them at this point haha.

nunya213 8y ago
They know you've traveled to Europe, they know all the places you went and how long you were in each one. How is that not useful?
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  They probably even know what carrier you used for your flight based on transit time between airports.
  - ReverseCold 8y ago
    Or just pull that information from the flight confirmation email that was sent to Gmail.
    - amatecha 8y ago
      Correct - they'll know your entire itinerary (and whoever else you traveled with) because of your hotel booking confirmations, too. Same with whatever events you bought tickets to. :)
    - joering2 8y ago
      From gmail they also have keys to yor website SSL, as majority of SSL cert providers will send those to admin email (form of verification that someone access admin/webmaster account) on file as form of validation (altho there are other options like CNAME in some providers)
      - jlgaddis 8y ago
        They might have a copy of the signed certificate that the CA sent you via e-mail, but they certainly should not have a copy of the private key that goes along with it (unless you did something stupid like let someone else generate the private key for you).
- kinsomo 8y ago
  >> Wow, they (Google) really keep everything.. They've still got my trip to Europe from 5 years ago on there, not sure how that's useful to them at this point haha. > They know you've traveled to Europe, they know all the places you went and how long you were in each one. How is that not useful? But how is deriving those facts from 5 year old location data actually useful to them? AFAIK, they don't try to drive "engagement" by inducing nostalgia with push notifications [1]. I don't really see the use of old data like that for ad-targeting beyond a coarse "travels internationally"-type categories that don't really require keeping the data around. [1] Remember when you were in Europe? Wasn't it fun? We were there too, following you. Please, please log on now to see what we tracked!
  - majormajor 8y ago
    > AFAIK, they don't try to drive "engagement" by inducing nostalgia with push notifications [1]. They definitely do this with Google Photos "revisit this day" stuff, but it seems just an engagement play than a direct monetization one.
  - jankassens 8y ago
    Did they go on a long distance vacation every year? They're probably a good target for travel ads. They're probably also in a higher income bracket then someone who's only going on local trips.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    They know you're wealthy enough to travel to Europe. They know you might buy airplane tickets. They can show you ads for other international destinations. If nothing else, they can sell ads against you for "Category: Travelled to X place within the last Y years".
    - netsharc 8y ago
      Thought experiment: your phone could know you liked a particular tourist spot because you spent a lot of time there, and later on when you upload pictures from your DSLR to Google Photos, the system will notice that there are a lot of photos that are timestamped within the time range when you were at that tourist spot. And data mining can tell that people who like that tourist spot A in country X also liked tourist spot B in city G in country Y a lot, so, tourism board of city G/country Y, here's a good target for your ad. And not just tourist stuff. Data mining might even tell they like a particular brand of, I don't know, yoghurt, so let's sell some of that yoghurt!
ebikelaw 8y ago
They keep it because it's useful to you, not because it's useful to them. You're just looking at it too cynically.
- choward 8y ago
  It could be useful to them in the future. You're just not looking at it cynically enough.
- amatecha 8y ago
  How do you know it's not useful to them? How can we have any way to know definitively how our data is used?
- Fnoord 8y ago
  You forgot /s
- stevenicr 8y ago
  I must disagree. Spending some time thinking how this info is useful to the end user as opposed to the data watcher / holder. I believe that this data is exponentially less useful for the end user as it is for the persons adversaries. Cell phone companies for example may have legitimate reasons to keep location data for billing disputes for 60 days or so, but holding that data longer makes it available to all kinds of agencies, law enforcers and those with that kind of access who would abuse that access, marketing groups, divorce lawyers, accident attorneys, all kinds of possible things that are detrimental to the end user. The data companies profit from sharing this data, and it costs the end user. Whatever benefits one can come up with, I think the scale is obviously tipped in the "more useful against you" than "for you" direction when it comes to long term location storage.
  - ebikelaw 8y ago
    The phone company doesn't hold it for you on your behalf; they don't have some frontend where you can query and see it. Google does hold it on your behalf. It's used for you in Google Maps to surface places you regularly go over places you've never been. This is why "directions to the pizza place" works. Location history is also used to automatically deduce your home, work, or school location, so you can use a command like "navigate to school" with Android Auto, or get traffic alerts along your normal routes, just as examples.
mtgx 8y ago
You can delete and stop further (official) data gathering here: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
- throwahey 8y ago
  The deceptive word here being, "delete".
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hateful 8y ago
I used this feature to figure out that my wife was cheating on me! So it was useful!

madeofpalk 8y ago

I'm surprised just how empty that is for me. While I don't have an Android phone, I do use Google Maps on my computer and iPhone quite a lot. It's got nothing for me. Maybe I turned something off ages ago and forgot?

plttn 8y ago
IIRC timeline/location history only generates from an Android device.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ebikelaw 8y ago
  That's not correct. Google location history also works with Google Maps and "the Google app" on iOS.
  - plttn 8y ago
    https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/4388034 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/4388034 >As of Google Maps version 3.2.1, you cannot turn on Location Reporting and History from the Google Maps app for iPhone and iPad. If you have Location History turned on from another Google app, like the Google app, the Google Maps app may still use Location History data stored in your Google account to give you better search results.
    - opless 8y ago
      The location data was initially part of Latitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Latitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Latitude, it went away for a while, appeared in the iOS Google Maps app, and then moved again to the google app. I use it for time tracking, time spent at clients sites, etc. It's not perfect, but perfectly good 95% of the time!
leoalves 8y ago

driverdan 8y ago

You can turn off location history for Google too. I did it years ago. The maps timeline link shows nothing for me.

bewl 8y ago
A question still remains for me: Are you just flipping a bit by turning it off, or are you not actually reporting data?
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  I'd be really interested in hearing an answer on this from Googlers. Does switching all these settings off actually affect what data Google collects and stores about you, or does it just mean they hide it from you on the activity page?
- denzil_correa 8y ago
  Considering that they look at IP addresses, it is a switch off for "GPS data"; not "location data".
gerdesj 8y ago
You can flip a widget that claims to do something. How do you know it actually does what you think it does? For example, it might simply mean that you no longer have access to your location history - which your experience documented here implies. That does not mean that the data is no longer there or being added to. Have you read the small print? Nearly appropriate anecdote: For a customer, the SNMP "public" community has been deemed a security issue. The GUI for three of their systems showed that the SNMP agent was not configured, let alone running. $snmpwalk -v2c -c public w.x.y.z enterprises from my PC says otherwise. Here we have a saying: "it does what it says on the tin" to imply a form of integrity (a quote from an advert, funnily enough.) Not all tins tell the complete truth.
- Liquid_Fire 8y ago
  While it's possible that Google may be keeping the data after you ask them to delete it, that would be a violation of the GDPR.

aldoushuxley001 8y ago

Surprisingly the default setting for both Google and Facebook's location history is off for me, so I guess they haven't been collecting my location data after all?

fireattack 8y ago
I can't even figure how to turn it on in FB. Maybe you can only do so on mobile/App?

colemickens 8y ago

Facebook's actually says it's disabled? Mine was virtually empty (I refuse to install mobile apps beyond Maps/SMS/etc), but it doesn't indicate that it's disabled. I'd love to disable it fully... As far as I can tell, there's no "disable" control on that page (only "Delete All Location Data") and there's no global toggle on my Account -> Privacy page. Wow. I never cease to be amazed at how many hoops they make you jump through. NO, Facebook, I will not install your awful app just to disable Location tracking. https://i.imgur.com/sUR3FU5.png https://i.imgur.com/sUR3FU5.png. Can't wait until they silently start scraping my browser's location and I have to know to login and delete that data regularly.

Keloo 8y ago

The google maps data showing makes sense (you're using maps, so why not offering the timeline of places you visited on maps). But the FB location history to me is just out of the blue. FB was meant to be just a social network, why the heck do they need that information, I thought FB just connect me with my friends (and do things related to that). It's a bit abusive imho. P.S. I'm aware of all the scandals, regulations, profile shadowing etc.

reubenmorais 8y ago
> you're using maps, so why not offering the timeline of places you visited on maps That functionality is tied in with Google Assistant as well, so if you have it enabled it tracks your Android phone all the time, not just when you're using Google Maps.
em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
> "why the heck do they need that information" So that they can make money so that they can provide the social network services for free to everyone, so that they can actually have a large social network.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  They make money by selling ads. I'm not sure why storing users' entire location history helps with this.
  - em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
    so they can make more effective ads.
StavrosK 8y ago
> so why not offering the timeline of places you visited on maps Because I don't want them to store it. It's ridiculously user-hostile and privacy-intrusive that Google maps won't even save your searches if you have location history turned off. If only my phone had some sort of area where you could store data locally, then maybe I wouldn't have to keep typing the same thing over and over again in Maps. One can only dream.

AHTERIX5000 8y ago

I've already disabled location history yet Google Maps continuosly keeps asking to review nearby places and take photos even when I haven't used the app in a long time. So it clearly polls location once in a while just to ask those questions (and log everything of course), very irritating. I know I can disable notifications but I'm not sure if it would disable polling in the background. I guess the only way is to keep location toggled off completely.

yurishimo 8y ago
It might be using WiFi to determine your location. Logging each SSID and comparing them to a known database of businesses in the area where you live.

ForFreedom 8y ago

Location history is OFF for both Google and Facebook for me