5 ms·

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

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!

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!