4 ms·

I think the average worst thing that could happen is that you end up going to court against someone (since we are thinking about averages, I'm thinking divorce)

I think the average worst thing that could happen is that you end up going to court against someone (since we are thinking about averages, I'm thinking divorce), they obtain your data, and use that to build a case against you. If you were cheating, for instance, your location info could be used to show all your meetings in quite some detail. And even if you weren't, you can always bend your stats a little bit to make it look as if you did. Enjoy discussing p-hacking and statistical significance with a judge. If you live in the US this may not be a problem now, but you also have to think ahead: courts may not be allowed to obtain your information right now (although that's probably not true if you are in a murder trial), but they might in the future. And even then, someone close to you could provide that information to the other part: a (soon to be ex) friend of yours downloads all your information* thanks to the new GDPR tools and provides them to the other part. *: I think this evidence would be admissible in court, since it's not the police the one who obtained evidence with illegal means. But even if it were not directly admissible, parallel construction is also a thing.

robbrown451 8y ago
So how would this happen? Google gives them my data? I'm sorry but I don't get it. Google can't do that. Even if they work at Google they can't get it. I just represented myself in a week long custody trial (I won primary custody, and yes I went up against an attorney), and there were lots of risks involved, but this sort of thing seems to be about the smallest one I could imagine. I'd like to hear if this has actually happened to anyone anywhere.
- probably_wrong 8y ago
  > Google can't do that. Even if they work at Google they can't get it. I'm not sure I understand this point, so let me make my point clearer. It's clear that Google(TM) can access your data. You probably mean "most google employees can't", which I agree with. But someone can access your data for sure, and in fact you can access your data: if you are a European citizen, you can request all of your data right now, thanks to the GDPR and Google has to comply. There are also other general tools to access the data[1]. So I'm not saying "a Google employee will go behind your back". I'm saying that either "Google(TM) could be compelled by a court order to give your data if laws change", or "someone could use your unlocked PC, click on 'Download my data', and give it to the other part" (again, more likely if the other part is tech savvy and planning on divorcing you). > I'd like to hear if this has actually happened to anyone anywhere. Someone getting in trouble because someone took their private information? It happens quite often in the Legal Advice subreddit. Here's one example[2]: > "My wife uploaded screenshots from my Ashley Madison account, hotel receipts and non-nude but sexual photos of me online before she moved out and filed for divorce. Do I have any legal recourse under Delaware law? (...) They were not public. The photos were from my phone and were not anywhere online and the credit card was in my name only. She had no right to access either one (nor my Ashley Madison account)." My specific case? No idea. But supposedly private information biting someone back is a regular event. Here's a page some lawyers in Orange County wrote on that [3] with some examples. * Edit: rethinking my point, I think you meant "how is this a Google problem, rather than an infosec problem". To that, my point would be: the fact that the information exists forever in one central place. [1] https://medium.com/productivity-in-the-cloud/6-links-that-will-show-you-what-google-knows-about-you-f39b8af9decc https://medium.com/productivity-in-the-cloud/6-links-that-wi... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/5b895c/my_wife_uploaded_screenshots_from_my_ashley/d9mixpr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/5b895c/my_wife... [3] http://orangecountydivorce.com/divorce-technology/ http://orangecountydivorce.com/divorce-technology/
  - robbrown451 8y ago
    Yeah I don't see the connection to Google or how using these non-Google services helps with that kind of thing. It's completely unrelated. You say "Google can access your data." What exactly does that mean? No single employee of Google can. They put immense protections in place because of just how costly it would be if this happened....it would destroy trust in the company that they have spent billions of dollars building up. This is a fundamentally different thing than someone's wife logging into their device and seeing their Ashley Madison stuff.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Even if they work at Google they can't get it. They can and have: "in at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors' Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the incidents. In an incident this spring involving a 15-year-old boy who he'd befriended, Barksdale tapped into call logs from Google Voice, Google's Internet phone service, after the boy refused to tell him the name of his new girlfriend, according to our source." http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...

robbrown451 8y ago

So how would this happen? Google gives them my data? I'm sorry but I don't get it. Google can't do that. Even if they work at Google they can't get it. I just represented myself in a week long custody trial (I won primary custody, and yes I went up against an attorney), and there were lots of risks involved, but this sort of thing seems to be about the smallest one I could imagine. I'd like to hear if this has actually happened to anyone anywhere.

probably_wrong 8y ago
> Google can't do that. Even if they work at Google they can't get it. I'm not sure I understand this point, so let me make my point clearer. It's clear that Google(TM) can access your data. You probably mean "most google employees can't", which I agree with. But someone can access your data for sure, and in fact you can access your data: if you are a European citizen, you can request all of your data right now, thanks to the GDPR and Google has to comply. There are also other general tools to access the data[1]. So I'm not saying "a Google employee will go behind your back". I'm saying that either "Google(TM) could be compelled by a court order to give your data if laws change", or "someone could use your unlocked PC, click on 'Download my data', and give it to the other part" (again, more likely if the other part is tech savvy and planning on divorcing you). > I'd like to hear if this has actually happened to anyone anywhere. Someone getting in trouble because someone took their private information? It happens quite often in the Legal Advice subreddit. Here's one example[2]: > "My wife uploaded screenshots from my Ashley Madison account, hotel receipts and non-nude but sexual photos of me online before she moved out and filed for divorce. Do I have any legal recourse under Delaware law? (...) They were not public. The photos were from my phone and were not anywhere online and the credit card was in my name only. She had no right to access either one (nor my Ashley Madison account)." My specific case? No idea. But supposedly private information biting someone back is a regular event. Here's a page some lawyers in Orange County wrote on that [3] with some examples. * Edit: rethinking my point, I think you meant "how is this a Google problem, rather than an infosec problem". To that, my point would be: the fact that the information exists forever in one central place. [1] https://medium.com/productivity-in-the-cloud/6-links-that-will-show-you-what-google-knows-about-you-f39b8af9decc https://medium.com/productivity-in-the-cloud/6-links-that-wi... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/5b895c/my_wife_uploaded_screenshots_from_my_ashley/d9mixpr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/5b895c/my_wife... [3] http://orangecountydivorce.com/divorce-technology/ http://orangecountydivorce.com/divorce-technology/
- robbrown451 8y ago
  Yeah I don't see the connection to Google or how using these non-Google services helps with that kind of thing. It's completely unrelated. You say "Google can access your data." What exactly does that mean? No single employee of Google can. They put immense protections in place because of just how costly it would be if this happened....it would destroy trust in the company that they have spent billions of dollars building up. This is a fundamentally different thing than someone's wife logging into their device and seeing their Ashley Madison stuff.
icebraining 8y ago
Even if they work at Google they can't get it. They can and have: "in at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors' Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the incidents. In an incident this spring involving a 15-year-old boy who he'd befriended, Barksdale tapped into call logs from Google Voice, Google's Internet phone service, after the boy refused to tell him the name of his new girlfriend, according to our source." http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...