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Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

LatteLazy 5y ago
I actually thing Google maps (Inc live congestion) is well worth the loss of privacy.
sunstone 5y ago
I've had a string of Google phones going back to the Nexus 5x but, for the very reasons laid out in this article, my next phone will likely be from Apple. That will be my first Apple product.
- underscore_ku 5y ago
  get a pinephone if you value freedom and privacy. apple ios is just as bad as android or microsoft windows
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    How is the app store on pinephone these days?
  - messe 5y ago
    > get a pinephone if you value freedom and privacy. apple ios is just as bad as android or microsoft windows It's not as black and white as that. Other people will have different requirements and make different tradeoffs to you. The PinePhone is great if you value freedom, privacy, and have the time and inclination to make it work for you. Most don't, and an iOS device is a good compromise if you value privacy over freedom to run your own code. It's not perfect, but it's better than Android.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    The pinephone is good for privacy only because it is unpopular. It offers far, far worse security against snooping by third-party apps than iOS does.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      This is provably false on every level. Android and iOS deliver plenty of telemetries to Google and Apple. Apps do plenty of surveillance as well.
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        iOS does very little telemetry. But it doesn't matter. OS telemetry is the least of your problems. That much bigger threat is that of third-party apps on your phone. And the PinePhone does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deal with that threat, while iOS has a huge amount of security built to prevent this.
        Seirdy 5y ago
        > And the PinePhone does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deal with that threat, while iOS has a huge amount of security built to prevent this. Huh? Most mobile-optimized distros offer apps through Flatpak, which gives much stronger sandboxing protections than iOS through Bubblewrap. You can block access to the network, Bluetooth, filesystem (outside the app's sandbox), GPU, accelerometer, webcam, etc. Most distros also offer SELinux and AppArmor for protections outside the sandbox. Accessing stuff from outside the sandbox (like files) is done through portals, similar to the iOS "share" dialog or file-choosing modals. For non-technical users, all of this is enabled by default. Programs like FlatSeal let them toggle permissions on and off. Technical users can override permissions, spoof fake information, and dive into SELinux rules. With iOS, users can't block network access from specific apps, spoof sensor data, block GPU access, etc. You're only as private as Apple thinks you need to be.
        goodpoint 5y ago
        Mobian provides tenths of thousands of packages through the Debian repositories. The amount of spyware and trackers allowed into Debian in the first place is very close to zero. Also it provides firejail. There is no need for flatpak.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    While some people can manage with a pinephone, it is not “production-ready” at all. I do own one, and I am very very thankful to all the people involved with it, but it is simply not comparable to even a low-end android phone, let alone a high-end one or an iphone. It’s a hobby project as of yet (as even mentioned on the website). Hopefully once software matures there will come a pinephone 2 that will pack a more modern hardware and have full android app compatibility (there is no way around it, it is needed) that can be actually used as a daily driver.
- C-x_C-f 5y ago
  FYI you can install GrapheneOS on a Pixel (3rd to 5th gen)
  - Karsteski 5y ago
    Or even more friendly, CalyxOS. Works perfectly, easy to install and very few problems in the 6 months I've been using it
    - kaba0 5y ago
      On which reasonably modern/performant phones can one install them? I did bought an iphone as my latest phone, because Google-riddled android is ridiculous (even though I like the ecosystem much better. Iphones can feel like some embedded software that only allows a few possibilities), but mainly because I could not find a phone on which installing some AOSP fork is safe, won’t delete important firmware (I believe quite a few mobiles will delete proprietary camera firmware)
      - Karsteski 5y ago
        It's mainly on Pixel phones, ironically. Has something to do with the security chip they come with
  - bogwog 5y ago
    Just looked that up, and the site describes the project as > GrapheneOS is a privacy and security focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility What does that mean? Is it a built-from-scratch OS with an Android compatability layer (like Blackberry 10), or is it just an indirect way of saying they’re based on Android (like Cyanognemod/Lineage OS)?
    - eingaeKaiy8ujie 5y ago
      It's based on the latest Android (AOSP) + privacy/security improvements. From a UX point of view it's basically a vanilla Android without any proprietary Google code (which means no Google Play of course but you can install F-Droid). The main developer is a security researcher and many of his improvements have been accepted upstream to AOSP.
- eingaeKaiy8ujie 5y ago
  Apple may protect you from Google and Facebook but it won't protect you from itself. iOS is completely closed and you can't verify if it respects your privacy. Don't trust Apple. Open source software is a fundamental requirement for privacy. GrapheneOS is one of the best alternatives.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Which phone do you recommend going with it?
    - commoner 5y ago
      GrapheneOS supports Google Pixel 2 and later, but only Google Pixel 3 and later are currently supported by vendor security updates: https://grapheneos.org/releases https://grapheneos.org/releases All Google Pixel phones released to date receive vendor security updates for 3 years after the release date: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705 https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705 A Pixel 4a ($349 new) would cover you until August 2023, and a Pixel 4a (5G) ($499 new) would cover you until November 2023 with better performance. The Pixel 5 is not a particularly good value for the price. Used Pixel 3, 3a, and 4 devices (along with their XL counterparts) are less expensive options with vendor support timeframes that expire sooner. The Pixel 3 and 4 (non-XL) models have poor battery life, so choose an XL model if you opt for either of those.
      - kaba0 5y ago
        Thanks! Unfortunately as you note recentish Pixels are not all that great, at least last time I checked. But perhaps at the next release I might change back (I really want to), if it’s suitable. But it is a real shame that other manufacturers make it very hard to replace the OS. The one other phone family I heard great things about is the One Plus, but they may also contain firmware that gets nulled.
- howzitallworkeh 5y ago
  Unfortunately, you will find iOS bad in different ways. For example: you cannot install NoScript, or anything like it, on an iOS browser. You must choose between "all JS on" or "all JS off", and third-party browsers like Firefox are crippled because Apple forces all iOS browsers to use their WebKit engine under the hood. The myriad of Safari "content blocker" apps are also pretty dismal, and often expensive. So ad-blocking is difficult as well. They're better about app tracking, but you might want to keep an Android phone handy if you enjoy browsing the web.
  - tobyhinloopen 5y ago
    Ad blocking works perfectly fine, wdym?
    - howzitallworkeh 5y ago
      I mean that 1Blocker is terrible compared to uBlock+NoScript, and that's the best content blocker I could find after spending days researching them. Plus, it costs $3/mo or $40 for something that barely functions. Web browsing in iOS is incredibly frustrating and privacy-unfriendly compared to Android. I recently bought an iPhone for the app tracking protection, but the difference between Safari and Firefox is like night and day.
      - andrewnicolalde 5y ago
        Have you had a look at AdGuard Pro? I use it on iOS and I don’t notice any ads on the web, and it’s not really different from using UBlock Origin on Firefox in my experience.
      - gorbypark 5y ago
        Not sure how it compares to others, but a free option is to install Firefox Focus and enable its content blocking in regular Safari. I’m assuming since all browsers are using the same engine underneath that Firefox just installs a standard iOS content blocker and enables it for itself, but works for all browsers on iOS.
    - 5y ago
- grishka 5y ago
  You can use an Android phone without Google services. You don't even need root or a custom ROM for that — there's a "disable" button on the app details page of every Google app, including GSF. You can complete the initial setup fully offline, too. In case you do need Google services, but want to have a say about which and how, there's MicroG, an open-source implementation of some of the most used ones like GCM (push messaging). You can't use an iPhone without Apple services, period. An Apple ID is a hard requirement to activate an iOS device, it literally won't let you past that screen without one. Even after you're done with that, you can only install apps from the app store, subject to that unfair, opaque approval process.
  - commoner 5y ago
    microG (a replacement for Google Play Services) includes a free and open source network location provider called UnifiedNlp: https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp UnifiedNlp allows you to choose the backends your Android device uses to determine the location, without providing any data to Google. Options include: - Mozilla Location Services: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.ichnaea/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.ichna... - Apple Location Services: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.apple/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.apple... - OpenCellID (offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gfd.gsmlocation/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gfd.gsmlocation/ - Radiocells.org (optionally offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.openbmap.unifiedNlp/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.openbmap.unifiedNlp/ - Déjà Vu (offline cache using Wi-Fi and cellular data): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fitchfamily.android.dejavu/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fitchfamily.android.deja... The easiest way to use microG is to switch to an Android distribution that has it preinstalled: - CalyxOS (supports Google Pixel 2 and later): https://calyxos.org https://calyxos.org - LineageOS for microG (supports all devices supported by LineageOS): https://lineage.microg.org https://lineage.microg.org - /e/ (some overlap with LineageOS, but also supports different devices): https://e.foundation https://e.foundation
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  I really have to decide if the customizability of my Android phone is worth losing my location / private data. I love Tasker, love automating boring repetitive work and other tasks out of my day. But is that worth losing all my privacy? Can't say...
- kache_ 5y ago
  I went through this and then realized that apple hardware is not meant for people who like to actually do things with their computers
  - GoofballJones 5y ago
    So, all the things I'm actually doing on Apple hardware I'm not really doing? Hmm...good to know. Thx.
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    > do things with their computers Do we mean "do thing to their computers"?
    - Xelynega 5y ago
      You can do anything you want to you computers, Apple won't send men in black after you if you open up your device(although they will make the parts impossibly hard to get ahold of). The issue is that apple won't let me execute any code I want on the phone/computer that I own, which is preventing me from doing something with my computer that I want to.
  - hackmiester 5y ago
    I'm not sure what my computer has to do with my phone, from a user's perspective. I find Macs increasingly irritating and frustrating to use, but I am extremely happy with my iPhone.
  - isatty 5y ago
    Examples? I get plenty of work done on apple hardware and refuse any other devices for mission critical applications (daily driver devices are all Apple, because I know they’ll work, without me spending a whole day configuring it).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I'd like an iPhone except I can't sideload apps like newpipe. I can't control my phone. I've had Nexus 4, 5, 6, and Pixel 1, 2, 3, and 4.
- abandonliberty 5y ago
  Apple somehow found taking a privacy stance would be good for their profitability, and I hope that bet pays off. Between that and the M1, it's the first time in my life I've considered their products. Lots of answers here on how an enthusiast can circumvent these problems on Android. I'm not going to give my mom a pinephone or custom rom, and I'm happy that there's an accessible mainstream option.
judge2020 5y ago
This could all be solved by breaking 'web & app activity' up into more granular permissions.
- ttt0 5y ago
  We can also try to break up Google into something more granular and see if it helps.
  - ppf 5y ago
    I'm always amused by calls for the breakup of the "unbearable monopoly" of Google, when it is itself the epitome of the Silicon Valley "monopolies need disrupting!" business model.
    - adamcstephens 5y ago
      Except SV investors actively avoid competition with the monopolies. They will try and disrupt for sure, but there’s a dead zone around monopolies.
      - ppf 5y ago
        Uber, Lyft, Air BnB, Paypal, etc etc, would beg to differ.
        adamcstephens 5y ago
        Uber and Lyft tackled local monopolies, sure, but not national or international ones. They also took a strategy of actively flaunting and breaking of laws in their growth. Not sure that’s a good form of disruption. What monopoly did AirBnB tackle? I’m guessing you’re suggesting PayPal went after Western Union? There are plenty of ways to exchange money though. Would my point be better if I clarified the monopolies? Perhaps if we focus on national monopolies? What VC money is going to challenge Facebook, Amazon or Google, or any area close to them? https://financialpost.com/technology/inside-the-kill-zone-big-tech-makes-life-miserable-for-some-startups-but-others-embrace-its-power https://financialpost.com/technology/inside-the-kill-zone-bi...
chimen 5y ago
Even attempting to stay private gets you banned on most services.
- toastal 5y ago
  Ran into this today logging into PayPal (the password-must-be-8-20-characters payment service) for the first time in a long time to buy a band t-shirt. After jumping through two different types of CAPTCHAs, now they require you share your phone number to log in. I contacted support via Twitter saying they have my email if they want to verify a login because I'm not comfortable with SIM jacking nor how data-mining is cross-referencing phone numbers (I can set up U2F or TOTP after initial verification). They said call them... which is still giving out your phone. I tried to use a Google Voice number, but I got an error about these types of numbers being blocked. To get a non-useless level of support, you must log in so it's either give up your data or no service for you. You shouldn't be required to give out your number to most online services. I just feel bad for the indie band I couldn't support.
  - Taek 5y ago
    This is one of the use cases for cryptocurrency. Decentralization means there is no company in the middle that can force you to give up your data.
    - toastal 5y ago
      In this case, Bandcamp, which I generally like, doesn't yet support crypto. I think it's also a lot to ask a small band to pick anything other than PayPal for international payment.
      - ttt0 5y ago
        Setting up a Monero wallet or whatever shouldn't be that hard.
      - Taek 5y ago
        I didn't mean as applied to this band specifically, just that in general cryptocurrency solves this class of problem. There are a lot of detractors who don't feel it has value, but this is an easy place we can make things better with crypto.
nojito 5y ago
It’s even worse than the headline implies. You couldn’t prevent location tracking unless you disabled the numerous switches in settings and turned off WiFi as well. The real damning allegation is that location data collected from google maps/apps and non-google apps was siphoned to all other google products through something that is redacted in the court docs. >"So there is no way to give a third party app your location and not Google? That doesn't sound like something we would want on the front page of the NYT Additionally this process was deemed so critical to Google’s overall revenues because of something else that was also redacted. https://www.azag.gov/media/interest/updated-redacted-google-complaint https://www.azag.gov/media/interest/updated-redacted-google-...
- jeffbee 5y ago
  OK "siphoned" is an opinion. Apple Maps also provides location services to other Apple products on its platform. Unless I disable the switch which is buried at Settings, Privacy, Location Services, System Services, Significant Locations, Apple will "allow your iCloud connected devices to learn places significant to you in order to provide useful location-related information in Maps, Calendar, Photos, and more." If I try to disable it, because I use iOS but I don't use any of those apps, it warns me that "Disabling Significant Locations will affect many Apple apps and services … such as Maps, Do Not Disturb While Driving, CarPlay, Siri, Calendar, and Photos." I'd like to know how that's different.
  - nojito 5y ago
    Sorry I wasn't clear, but it was google maps/apps and non-google apps.
  - kyralis 5y ago
    That data isn't actually shared with Apple. It's used on device by the client applications for those services.
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      OK, but I don't find the distinction as stark as others on HN seem to. My location data being used by Apple-authored applications running on my device, none of which I've ever intentionally used, is not that different to me than my location data being used on my behalf by Google-written applications, many of which I personally enjoy, running in Google data centers. I like that I can see my location history in Google Maps for web, I also like that I can get that data as KML from Google Takeout.
max_hammer 5y ago
If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. Few years back you could easily root your android device and get custom ROM installed. Now, only solution is use a feature phone without gps and wifi and have a separate device for connecting to internet. IPhone is also a good alternative but I don't agree with thier walled garden development philosophy. Edit: You pay a separate fee for using Microsoft windows but for Android thier is no separate fee hence the product reference. Downvoting won't change the fact.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  Eh? I certainly paid for my phone so I don't see the applicability of that soundbite here.
  - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
    You paid for Google maps - weird
    - dividedbyzero 5y ago
      They paid for a phone advertised to include this service, so, in a way, yes, they did.
      - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
        I'm afraid you don't understand the flow of money here at all. Google or others pay to be the default app for maps / search etc on things like iPhone. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-search-deal-doj-antitrust-suit-2020-10%3Famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/google-...
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        dividedbyzero 5y ago
JCM9 5y ago
There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple and others are taking a stance of making it increasingly hard for Google and Facebook to do what they want to via updates now advertised as “features” that protect consumers. As these documents highlight Google knows consumers want this privacy and it scares the $&!& out of them. Interesting days ahead.
- Vespasian 5y ago
  Google even managed to incur heavy losses from offering cloud infrastructure services. A business which usually is a guaranteed golden goose. They are really bad at making money with anything that isn't advertising.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure they're doing that to draw folks from AWS and similar.
    - ForHackernews 5y ago
      Yeah, but you'd have to be a fool to go. Google has proven over and over again that they don't value customer support or long term maintenance. They will get bored and sunset services you depend on, or switch off your entire business because some employee sent suspicious email on his gmail.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        GCP is very different than the consumer services.
        ForHackernews 5y ago
lazyeye 5y ago
It used to be "don't be evil". Now its "hide, deny and obsfucate our evil".
- filterfish 5y ago
  Or put more plainly we're just a bunch of cunts.
  - sthnblllII 5y ago
    No, the guy who takes your parking space is a cunt. Google is evil.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  I think a more useful life lesson is that an organization's motto is not a useful measure of its true internal or external ethics - regardless of what it says - regardless of the type of organization. A motto is, by definition, marketing. Even more generally, I worry about the trend on social media to value words so much more than actions.
  - filterfish 5y ago
    In the early days they did seem to follow that motto so there was at least some cause to believe them.
  - bogwog 5y ago
    Or better yet, that a large corporation and a mega corporation are two different beasts. The latter needs to be regulated. I disagree that a motto is just marketing fluff. Especially in smaller companies, a mission statement can provide guidance that, in practical terms, acts as a tool for decision making for every employee in the organization (and to some extent, partners and clients) But once they’re large enough where they could collapse the world economy if the CEO snorts a bad batch one day and decides to fire everyone, then that type of stuff is meaningless.
  - rodgerd 5y ago
garbagetime 5y ago
It this point "used" is clearly a more accurate term than "user".
jeffbee 5y ago
Sounds like lots of people are going to have to re-take the "You Said What‽" training. But seriously why would a product manager know with certainty how different settings interact? The only person who really knows would be the authors of the features that read those settings, and possibly not even them. These systems are too complex, no intelligent person should claim to understand them perfectly.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Considering all the dark patterns they've implemented to force location tracking there's no way management doesn't know about what the settings are meant to accomplish.
arkades 5y ago
Earlier this week there was a post regarding Google and its utilization of private health information. A number of Googlers came forward to describe how very seriously Google takes user privacy and keeping inappropriate data from being shared across silos. I got the overall impression of Googlers taking the position of “you guys don’t know how seriously we take peoples privacy.” If any of those Googlers would please comment on how to square those statements with the featured article, I’d appreciate it.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Health care data is the only thing with regulations in the US. Everything else is fair game. That is how Google rakes in the billions. They aren't going to leave money on the table to satisfy an ethical code.
  - tolbish 5y ago
    I wonder how much evil they could actually be getting away with if they wanted to. Imagine all of the trade secrets and national security secrets they could easily obtain by analyzing who is Googling what from where, or who is accessing their services from where.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Which specific factual aspect of this story do you believe contradicts those claims? I'm a Xoogler, not a Googler, but in my post-Google experience I haven't seen anything that was even in the same league as Google's privacy controls. In my personal privacy threat model I think Google scores 10/10. They protect my data against external attackers, which in my view is the main problem faced by personal data, and their protections against insider risk are also excellent. Other places where I've worked, that you've definitely heard of, have security and insider risk practices that are a complete f-ing joke. There's nobody at Google who is "the DBA" who can just covertly access your data, there's no ad-hoc logs access (every logs access flows through a proxy that ensures only limited access for pre-defined purposes), and there are software controls that trigger privacy incident response (by a 24x7 user privacy incident response team) whenever an insider attempts to access user data in excess of their authority. In protocol buffer definitions, every field has an annotation for whether it contains private, sensitive, or non-private information so that even in crash dumps and debug logs those fields are censored before being printed. I really think Google has a pretty strong privacy story, compared to virtually every other company (except Apple and Microsoft) who leave themselves highly exposed to both outside and insider attacks, software (and even hardware) supply-chain attacks, accidental leaks, leaks into debug systems, poor encryption practices, and generally wanton behavior.
dlsa 5y ago
This cant be just location either. Anything you'd think of as private. I wonder what the privacy implications of using something like DDG on an android phone is like. I'm fairly sure google are quite desperately keen to grab any and all data from anything visited using the DDG app. I don't see any way to stop Google from doing it either.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
what about users who don't sign into their android phones with a google account and don't actively use google apps like maps or chrome or whatever they have? i suspect they still have your data but it isn't tied to "you" unless you tell them by linking who you are so you should be fine?
- rantwasp 5y ago
  so an android phone without the store? intriguing. at that point you might as well switch to a dumbphone. are dumb phones still a thing?
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    aurora store is a thing.
    - bozzcl 5y ago
      And F-Droid. And there’s plenty of sites to download APKs outside of the Play Store, though I don’t know how reliable they are.
      - mackrevinack 5y ago
        even just extracting the apk's and side loading then is good enough for 95% my use cases. there are show that key you extract, but you would still want something that is trustworthy though. tasker is what I've been using lately and you can automate the process a bit more. i turned off auto updates in the play store years ago after i got stuck with an app that had some bug in it, where it was working fine before the update. now i only update and app if something is broken or if i really need the new features it offers.
  - notdang 5y ago
    There are plenty of other stores to chose from. The problem here is that there are some apps that don't work without Google services, and those are the apps that you need the most: banking apps, payment apps, Uber, etc.
bpodgursky 5y ago
Amusingly, I've shared my location permanently with a couple close friends on Google Maps, and Google will not shut up about it, reminding me every month about it. I get aggressive monthly warnings "Are you SURE you want to share your location with XX,YY,ZZ?". I wish there was a toggle where I could say "yes, I absolutely positively am OK with the privacy implications here, because I don't care very much; please forever stop bothering me."
- aforty 5y ago
  This isn’t the point of the article. The point is that you can’t share your data with your friends without sharing that data with Google the company as well.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Going to have to say "duh" here. Short of an e2ee location sharing app, you have to send your location through an intermediary for your friend to see it.
    - dzdt 5y ago
      It is "duh" that google has access to the information as they relay it from your phone to another party. But you could imagine it being like the post office, where in the US it is a federal offense to read someone's mail en route. Google could convey the location information with a "sealed envelope" policy. But they don't.
    - folmar 5y ago
      > Short of an e2ee location sharing app Delta chat can do it for you.
    - Xelynega 5y ago
      I believe e2ee should be the default when I consent to share private information with someone through an intermediary. The libraries are already on every device with a web browser and the overhead is minimal, so IMO there's no excuse other than the intermediary wanting to look at the data.
_trampeltier 5y ago
At the same time, Google think allways I'm in germany on work, because our company has just one large internet connection for all company users from the whole world. And google does not even let me change the country.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  Yes that’s annoying. In the past you could use a country’s domain to choose Google’s localization but it’s not the case anymore. And their “ncr” (no country redirect) feature doesn’t work anymore. It’s one of the main reason I’ve been using Duckduckgo more and more.
- JamesDeepDown 5y ago
  Googles forced country localization is IMBECILICLY STUPID. I am currently in a foreign country. My English OS laptop with English browser has been logging in to gmail in English for years, and I ask Google search to show results in English for 5 years and EVERY TIME it tries to show the local language. Going to google.com is IGNORED, why?? Google engineers are paid $$$$$$$$ of dollars to implement THE MOST STUPID CODE I HAVE EVER HAD TO DEAL WITH AAAAARGH.
  - notdang 5y ago
    Same for me, worse, I search for something in English and it shows me results in the local language. And if you think that SEO destroyed the English internet, try it in Spanish, there is literally nothing there, pure FB and Pinterest.
  - danlugo92 5y ago
    Funny, I've been using google since forever in an spanish speaker country and it always correctly (when logged in) shows me results in english (I have it set it to english).
    - CamTin 5y ago
      I think the frustration is mainly that you have to be logged in and set some Google-specific setting in their application. A well-behaved HTTP server should simply honor the value of the Accept-Language request header regardless of what IP address a request is coming from.
sirius87 5y ago
From using Google servers for internet connectivity checks to NTP and DNS servers, Android has deep connections to Google's infrastructure. [1] https://e.foundation/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/e-state-of-degooglisation.pdf https://e.foundation/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/e-state-of-d...
QuadrupleA 5y ago
Google had a brilliant advertising business with AdWords originally, where the ads were simply based on the search term and not a bunch of Orwellian surveillance on the person searching. From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best. And per this article, those gains are clearly coming at the expense of user trust and goodwill, something not reflected in click thru rates and RPM. Here's hoping we can get past all this invasive retargeting / surveillance / privacy-invading crap and get back to straightforward contextual ads, like car parts ads on a hot rod website - our world would be better for it, and maybe Google could restore a little of its rapidly fading goodwill.
- coliveira 5y ago
  My opinion is that the target ads is just a cover, the real reason they want to track users is to give more data to their in-house AI system that learns what people do once they reach certain page. This knowledge (what people will do) is what is important to them, rather than simply showing certain ads. For example, if Google knows the profit potential of certain actions, they will raise the ad cost on that property by the true value, instead of relying on non-targeted auctions.
  - nexuist 5y ago
    If this was true then every single ad campaign would be worth it then, no? I thought that lots of people try Google or FB ads with a couple thousand dollars and never recoup operating costs. If Google knows how much profit a certain page could bring then they could also tell you exactly what to price your product at to maximize returns.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      How would it profit Google?
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        They would charge you a fee for telling you that?
indymike 5y ago
I would love to have a control panel that lists who I'm sharing my location with. Not what apps. What people and companies, including secondary buyers. With an on/off toggle. And this list needs to include my cell phone carrier, the OS vendor, the hardware manufacturer and, perhaps even the government where there's no warrant. Then extend the model to other things... one can dream.
rantwasp 5y ago
what bothers me is the normalization of collecting this data in the first place. some people are outraged, but hey if google does it, are you really surprised when someone else does it? I have worked pretty hard to kick google out of my digital life. it’s hard but not impossible. what apple is doing with their privacy schtick has probably raised the alert level to red on the Borg and on the Klingon ships. There probably is going to be an intense struggle following with more things like this coming out.
takker 5y ago
Google dropped the "don't be evil" motto in 2015 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
- Crash0v3rid3 5y ago
  No they didn’t, it’s still there - https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
causality0 5y ago
To this day, if I scroll off screen on Google Maps and then hit the "center view" button I get nagged to allow Google to use my phone to wardrive even when wi-fi is turned off. It would be nice if I could use Google products without audibly wishing violent misfortune on their executives.
tobyhinloopen 5y ago
I always find it funny how articles like this are behind a “privacy” cookie wall.
julianmarq 5y ago
I saw some people saying that this makes them want to switch towards iphones next. I'm not gonna lie, I considered it for a moment too, like a year ago... But apple is now engaging in its own share of dark patterns and is now collecting data too. There have been multiple articles on the matter shared here even. Thinking that apple is better than google for privacy (or, even if it is right now, that it will remain so for any reasonable amount of time) is... overly optimistic, at best. Unless it chances paths, of course, which I don't see likely.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > There have been multiple articles on the matter shared here even. Here are the threads I'm aware of off the top of my head. What other threads should I look into? - Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments[1] - Apple reportedly dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained (2020)[2] - Apple puts more adverts in App Store after ad-tracking ban[3] - Apple to boost ads business as iPhone changes hurt Facebook[4] - Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties[5] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25777207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25777207 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27051736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27051736 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901868 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607386
  - GoofballJones 5y ago
    1. Thanks..as it shows the article in question was full of holes, such as the Russians requiring an app be baked in and not being able to uninstall. This was false. 2. This is for iCLOUD backups. Yes, that's a problem. But you can turn off iCloud backups totally...and then use your computer to make the backup while tethered and THAT can be encrypted. If your security conscience, don't use iCloud back-up. Yes. 3. Adverts in the App Store aren't tracking you. They're adverts in the app store. I forget that when someone these days sees an ad, their face melts. 4. Again, Apple isn't sitting there looking over your shoulder watching everything you do for the ads. The ads are for the apps that are "free" and get revenue from the ads in their apps. Usually pushing people to pay the $1.99 for the app. Annoying, yes. On the level of Facebook or Google? Not even close. But keep an eye on this. 5. Apple took 3 years to fully cut ties with a supplier using child labor. Fully cut ties. They are no longer doing it...but took their sweet time. Again, hold their feet to the fire over this.
heavyset_go 5y ago
You can't even use most of the new Chromecast's features without enabling Web & App Activity tracking on your Google account. Web & App Activity tracking keeps detailed logs of every search term you use, every time you install or open an app, the sites you visit, etc.
grammers 5y ago
What really devastated me was when I found out that even if you try to keep yourself private, you'll get exposed by your friends: Just by tracking that you are regularly close to others, for example meeting for a camping trip, you suddenly get camping advertisements - probably because your friends searched for something or booked the trip via Gmail or whatever. I don't really know how it works, but it's awfully scary.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  They really like to tag and paste your telephone number into facebook messages as well. sigh
anticristi 5y ago
I hate to repeat it, but the US really needs its GDPR.
oblib 5y ago
Oddly, when loaded Google News this afternoon and clicked on "Local News" it showed me news for New York. I live in SW Missouri. I'm using Firefox with FB Container and Privacy Badger on a Mac mini (Late 2009).
alexander_gold 5y ago
https://cannablazeweed.net https://cannablazeweed.net
tomohawk 5y ago
the only way to fix this is to make it so that any information about a person is owned by that person, regardless of who is storing it or how it was collected. companies should have to pay rent to the data owners every year. the only exception should be information collected by the government with a court issued warrant.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
intellaughs 5y ago
About two weeks ago I got an envelope in the mail from Google saying they were offering to pay $1000 per month to install a special router into your home that tracked everything regarding your internet usage. They disclosed everything they'd be tracking and said all the information recorded would be viewable by google. They even sent a $1 bill (I guess to prove they were serious). It was quite strange but really made me realize how invasive Google is planning to be in the future.
streamofdigits 5y ago
Surveillance capitalism will implode not because of its exceptionally bad karma but under the weight of its own economic stupidity. In the "Mystery of Capital" de Soto waxes lyrical about "why capitalism triumphs in the west and fails everywhere else": Spoiler alert, it is due to conceiving and protecting private property. Spoiler alert II: that was once upon a time in the west and it is no more. If wealth is built on a system that secures property and if that applies to land, tangible assets, intellectual property etc it sure as hell also applies to digital "land", information flows, data sovereign business models, entrepreneurial agency and all the value that those can in principle support. In fact the panopticon "platform" system, conceived by sociopaths and inflicted on western societies by corrupt politicians is more feudalism than capitalism in outlook (Complete with the modern day serfs plying the rented clouds). To those individuals salivating to be part of this malevolent trillion dollar club: a trillion is sizable "value", I'll grant you that. But its nothing like the value that would be generated if society as a whole was empowered to be part of a digital economy. You can also throw in democracy and humanistic ideals as a bonus.
petee 5y ago
Notably, when I decided to check my Android 11 privacy settings, first thing I noticed is that every setting page has a help icon at the top with an explanation what the settings are...except privacy, which is the only section with no help, and no explanation, and no 'report feedback' option
qwerty456127 5y ago
I rarely ever turn location (GPS) on and I always deny using WiFi to improve location precision. Do I still have location privacy problem?
worik 5y ago
My favourite: “This doesn’t sound like something we would want on the front page of the [New York Times].”
everywhere15 5y ago
Imagine your wifi also comes from Google if the Loon project come through...
alexander_gold 5y ago
I believe everything technology is not safe nowadays. https://superflyjetskis.shop https://superflyjetskis.shop
joelbondurant 5y ago
Google gonna Google.
h0nd 5y ago
This shows me in a most certain way, that it is no coincidence that it is impossible to deactivate location services quickly in CC on iOS.

I actually thing Google maps (Inc live congestion) is well worth the loss of privacy.

I've had a string of Google phones going back to the Nexus 5x but, for the very reasons laid out in this article, my next phone will likely be from Apple. That will be my first Apple product.

underscore_ku 5y ago
get a pinephone if you value freedom and privacy. apple ios is just as bad as android or microsoft windows
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  How is the app store on pinephone these days?
- messe 5y ago
  > get a pinephone if you value freedom and privacy. apple ios is just as bad as android or microsoft windows It's not as black and white as that. Other people will have different requirements and make different tradeoffs to you. The PinePhone is great if you value freedom, privacy, and have the time and inclination to make it work for you. Most don't, and an iOS device is a good compromise if you value privacy over freedom to run your own code. It's not perfect, but it's better than Android.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  The pinephone is good for privacy only because it is unpopular. It offers far, far worse security against snooping by third-party apps than iOS does.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    This is provably false on every level. Android and iOS deliver plenty of telemetries to Google and Apple. Apps do plenty of surveillance as well.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      iOS does very little telemetry. But it doesn't matter. OS telemetry is the least of your problems. That much bigger threat is that of third-party apps on your phone. And the PinePhone does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deal with that threat, while iOS has a huge amount of security built to prevent this.
      - Seirdy 5y ago
        > And the PinePhone does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deal with that threat, while iOS has a huge amount of security built to prevent this. Huh? Most mobile-optimized distros offer apps through Flatpak, which gives much stronger sandboxing protections than iOS through Bubblewrap. You can block access to the network, Bluetooth, filesystem (outside the app's sandbox), GPU, accelerometer, webcam, etc. Most distros also offer SELinux and AppArmor for protections outside the sandbox. Accessing stuff from outside the sandbox (like files) is done through portals, similar to the iOS "share" dialog or file-choosing modals. For non-technical users, all of this is enabled by default. Programs like FlatSeal let them toggle permissions on and off. Technical users can override permissions, spoof fake information, and dive into SELinux rules. With iOS, users can't block network access from specific apps, spoof sensor data, block GPU access, etc. You're only as private as Apple thinks you need to be.
        goodpoint 5y ago
        Mobian provides tenths of thousands of packages through the Debian repositories. The amount of spyware and trackers allowed into Debian in the first place is very close to zero. Also it provides firejail. There is no need for flatpak.
- kaba0 5y ago
  While some people can manage with a pinephone, it is not “production-ready” at all. I do own one, and I am very very thankful to all the people involved with it, but it is simply not comparable to even a low-end android phone, let alone a high-end one or an iphone. It’s a hobby project as of yet (as even mentioned on the website). Hopefully once software matures there will come a pinephone 2 that will pack a more modern hardware and have full android app compatibility (there is no way around it, it is needed) that can be actually used as a daily driver.
C-x_C-f 5y ago
FYI you can install GrapheneOS on a Pixel (3rd to 5th gen)
- Karsteski 5y ago
  Or even more friendly, CalyxOS. Works perfectly, easy to install and very few problems in the 6 months I've been using it
  - kaba0 5y ago
    On which reasonably modern/performant phones can one install them? I did bought an iphone as my latest phone, because Google-riddled android is ridiculous (even though I like the ecosystem much better. Iphones can feel like some embedded software that only allows a few possibilities), but mainly because I could not find a phone on which installing some AOSP fork is safe, won’t delete important firmware (I believe quite a few mobiles will delete proprietary camera firmware)
    - Karsteski 5y ago
      It's mainly on Pixel phones, ironically. Has something to do with the security chip they come with
- bogwog 5y ago
  Just looked that up, and the site describes the project as > GrapheneOS is a privacy and security focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility What does that mean? Is it a built-from-scratch OS with an Android compatability layer (like Blackberry 10), or is it just an indirect way of saying they’re based on Android (like Cyanognemod/Lineage OS)?
  - eingaeKaiy8ujie 5y ago
    It's based on the latest Android (AOSP) + privacy/security improvements. From a UX point of view it's basically a vanilla Android without any proprietary Google code (which means no Google Play of course but you can install F-Droid). The main developer is a security researcher and many of his improvements have been accepted upstream to AOSP.
eingaeKaiy8ujie 5y ago
Apple may protect you from Google and Facebook but it won't protect you from itself. iOS is completely closed and you can't verify if it respects your privacy. Don't trust Apple. Open source software is a fundamental requirement for privacy. GrapheneOS is one of the best alternatives.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Which phone do you recommend going with it?
  - commoner 5y ago
    GrapheneOS supports Google Pixel 2 and later, but only Google Pixel 3 and later are currently supported by vendor security updates: https://grapheneos.org/releases https://grapheneos.org/releases All Google Pixel phones released to date receive vendor security updates for 3 years after the release date: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705 https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705 A Pixel 4a ($349 new) would cover you until August 2023, and a Pixel 4a (5G) ($499 new) would cover you until November 2023 with better performance. The Pixel 5 is not a particularly good value for the price. Used Pixel 3, 3a, and 4 devices (along with their XL counterparts) are less expensive options with vendor support timeframes that expire sooner. The Pixel 3 and 4 (non-XL) models have poor battery life, so choose an XL model if you opt for either of those.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      Thanks! Unfortunately as you note recentish Pixels are not all that great, at least last time I checked. But perhaps at the next release I might change back (I really want to), if it’s suitable. But it is a real shame that other manufacturers make it very hard to replace the OS. The one other phone family I heard great things about is the One Plus, but they may also contain firmware that gets nulled.
howzitallworkeh 5y ago
Unfortunately, you will find iOS bad in different ways. For example: you cannot install NoScript, or anything like it, on an iOS browser. You must choose between "all JS on" or "all JS off", and third-party browsers like Firefox are crippled because Apple forces all iOS browsers to use their WebKit engine under the hood. The myriad of Safari "content blocker" apps are also pretty dismal, and often expensive. So ad-blocking is difficult as well. They're better about app tracking, but you might want to keep an Android phone handy if you enjoy browsing the web.
- tobyhinloopen 5y ago
  Ad blocking works perfectly fine, wdym?
  - howzitallworkeh 5y ago
    I mean that 1Blocker is terrible compared to uBlock+NoScript, and that's the best content blocker I could find after spending days researching them. Plus, it costs $3/mo or $40 for something that barely functions. Web browsing in iOS is incredibly frustrating and privacy-unfriendly compared to Android. I recently bought an iPhone for the app tracking protection, but the difference between Safari and Firefox is like night and day.
    - andrewnicolalde 5y ago
      Have you had a look at AdGuard Pro? I use it on iOS and I don’t notice any ads on the web, and it’s not really different from using UBlock Origin on Firefox in my experience.
    - gorbypark 5y ago
      Not sure how it compares to others, but a free option is to install Firefox Focus and enable its content blocking in regular Safari. I’m assuming since all browsers are using the same engine underneath that Firefox just installs a standard iOS content blocker and enables it for itself, but works for all browsers on iOS.
  - 5y ago
grishka 5y ago
You can use an Android phone without Google services. You don't even need root or a custom ROM for that — there's a "disable" button on the app details page of every Google app, including GSF. You can complete the initial setup fully offline, too. In case you do need Google services, but want to have a say about which and how, there's MicroG, an open-source implementation of some of the most used ones like GCM (push messaging). You can't use an iPhone without Apple services, period. An Apple ID is a hard requirement to activate an iOS device, it literally won't let you past that screen without one. Even after you're done with that, you can only install apps from the app store, subject to that unfair, opaque approval process.
- commoner 5y ago
  microG (a replacement for Google Play Services) includes a free and open source network location provider called UnifiedNlp: https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp UnifiedNlp allows you to choose the backends your Android device uses to determine the location, without providing any data to Google. Options include: - Mozilla Location Services: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.ichnaea/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.ichna... - Apple Location Services: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.apple/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.apple... - OpenCellID (offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gfd.gsmlocation/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gfd.gsmlocation/ - Radiocells.org (optionally offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.openbmap.unifiedNlp/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.openbmap.unifiedNlp/ - Déjà Vu (offline cache using Wi-Fi and cellular data): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fitchfamily.android.dejavu/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fitchfamily.android.deja... The easiest way to use microG is to switch to an Android distribution that has it preinstalled: - CalyxOS (supports Google Pixel 2 and later): https://calyxos.org https://calyxos.org - LineageOS for microG (supports all devices supported by LineageOS): https://lineage.microg.org https://lineage.microg.org - /e/ (some overlap with LineageOS, but also supports different devices): https://e.foundation https://e.foundation
notsureaboutpg 5y ago
I really have to decide if the customizability of my Android phone is worth losing my location / private data. I love Tasker, love automating boring repetitive work and other tasks out of my day. But is that worth losing all my privacy? Can't say...
kache_ 5y ago
I went through this and then realized that apple hardware is not meant for people who like to actually do things with their computers
- GoofballJones 5y ago
  So, all the things I'm actually doing on Apple hardware I'm not really doing? Hmm...good to know. Thx.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  > do things with their computers Do we mean "do thing to their computers"?
  - Xelynega 5y ago
    You can do anything you want to you computers, Apple won't send men in black after you if you open up your device(although they will make the parts impossibly hard to get ahold of). The issue is that apple won't let me execute any code I want on the phone/computer that I own, which is preventing me from doing something with my computer that I want to.
- hackmiester 5y ago
  I'm not sure what my computer has to do with my phone, from a user's perspective. I find Macs increasingly irritating and frustrating to use, but I am extremely happy with my iPhone.
- isatty 5y ago
  Examples? I get plenty of work done on apple hardware and refuse any other devices for mission critical applications (daily driver devices are all Apple, because I know they’ll work, without me spending a whole day configuring it).
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I'd like an iPhone except I can't sideload apps like newpipe. I can't control my phone. I've had Nexus 4, 5, 6, and Pixel 1, 2, 3, and 4.
abandonliberty 5y ago
Apple somehow found taking a privacy stance would be good for their profitability, and I hope that bet pays off. Between that and the M1, it's the first time in my life I've considered their products. Lots of answers here on how an enthusiast can circumvent these problems on Android. I'm not going to give my mom a pinephone or custom rom, and I'm happy that there's an accessible mainstream option.

judge2020 5y ago

This could all be solved by breaking 'web & app activity' up into more granular permissions.

ttt0 5y ago
We can also try to break up Google into something more granular and see if it helps.
- ppf 5y ago
  I'm always amused by calls for the breakup of the "unbearable monopoly" of Google, when it is itself the epitome of the Silicon Valley "monopolies need disrupting!" business model.
  - adamcstephens 5y ago
    Except SV investors actively avoid competition with the monopolies. They will try and disrupt for sure, but there’s a dead zone around monopolies.
    - ppf 5y ago
      Uber, Lyft, Air BnB, Paypal, etc etc, would beg to differ.
      - adamcstephens 5y ago
        Uber and Lyft tackled local monopolies, sure, but not national or international ones. They also took a strategy of actively flaunting and breaking of laws in their growth. Not sure that’s a good form of disruption. What monopoly did AirBnB tackle? I’m guessing you’re suggesting PayPal went after Western Union? There are plenty of ways to exchange money though. Would my point be better if I clarified the monopolies? Perhaps if we focus on national monopolies? What VC money is going to challenge Facebook, Amazon or Google, or any area close to them? https://financialpost.com/technology/inside-the-kill-zone-big-tech-makes-life-miserable-for-some-startups-but-others-embrace-its-power https://financialpost.com/technology/inside-the-kill-zone-bi...

chimen 5y ago

Even attempting to stay private gets you banned on most services.

toastal 5y ago
Ran into this today logging into PayPal (the password-must-be-8-20-characters payment service) for the first time in a long time to buy a band t-shirt. After jumping through two different types of CAPTCHAs, now they require you share your phone number to log in. I contacted support via Twitter saying they have my email if they want to verify a login because I'm not comfortable with SIM jacking nor how data-mining is cross-referencing phone numbers (I can set up U2F or TOTP after initial verification). They said call them... which is still giving out your phone. I tried to use a Google Voice number, but I got an error about these types of numbers being blocked. To get a non-useless level of support, you must log in so it's either give up your data or no service for you. You shouldn't be required to give out your number to most online services. I just feel bad for the indie band I couldn't support.
- Taek 5y ago
  This is one of the use cases for cryptocurrency. Decentralization means there is no company in the middle that can force you to give up your data.
  - toastal 5y ago
    In this case, Bandcamp, which I generally like, doesn't yet support crypto. I think it's also a lot to ask a small band to pick anything other than PayPal for international payment.
    - ttt0 5y ago
      Setting up a Monero wallet or whatever shouldn't be that hard.
    - Taek 5y ago
      I didn't mean as applied to this band specifically, just that in general cryptocurrency solves this class of problem. There are a lot of detractors who don't feel it has value, but this is an easy place we can make things better with crypto.

nojito 5y ago

It’s even worse than the headline implies. You couldn’t prevent location tracking unless you disabled the numerous switches in settings and turned off WiFi as well. The real damning allegation is that location data collected from google maps/apps and non-google apps was siphoned to all other google products through something that is redacted in the court docs. >"So there is no way to give a third party app your location and not Google? That doesn't sound like something we would want on the front page of the NYT Additionally this process was deemed so critical to Google’s overall revenues because of something else that was also redacted. https://www.azag.gov/media/interest/updated-redacted-google-complaint https://www.azag.gov/media/interest/updated-redacted-google-...

jeffbee 5y ago
OK "siphoned" is an opinion. Apple Maps also provides location services to other Apple products on its platform. Unless I disable the switch which is buried at Settings, Privacy, Location Services, System Services, Significant Locations, Apple will "allow your iCloud connected devices to learn places significant to you in order to provide useful location-related information in Maps, Calendar, Photos, and more." If I try to disable it, because I use iOS but I don't use any of those apps, it warns me that "Disabling Significant Locations will affect many Apple apps and services … such as Maps, Do Not Disturb While Driving, CarPlay, Siri, Calendar, and Photos." I'd like to know how that's different.
- nojito 5y ago
  Sorry I wasn't clear, but it was google maps/apps and non-google apps.
- kyralis 5y ago
  That data isn't actually shared with Apple. It's used on device by the client applications for those services.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    OK, but I don't find the distinction as stark as others on HN seem to. My location data being used by Apple-authored applications running on my device, none of which I've ever intentionally used, is not that different to me than my location data being used on my behalf by Google-written applications, many of which I personally enjoy, running in Google data centers. I like that I can see my location history in Google Maps for web, I also like that I can get that data as KML from Google Takeout.

max_hammer 5y ago

If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. Few years back you could easily root your android device and get custom ROM installed. Now, only solution is use a feature phone without gps and wifi and have a separate device for connecting to internet. IPhone is also a good alternative but I don't agree with thier walled garden development philosophy. Edit: You pay a separate fee for using Microsoft windows but for Android thier is no separate fee hence the product reference. Downvoting won't change the fact.

im3w1l 5y ago
Eh? I certainly paid for my phone so I don't see the applicability of that soundbite here.
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  You paid for Google maps - weird
  - dividedbyzero 5y ago
    They paid for a phone advertised to include this service, so, in a way, yes, they did.
    - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
      I'm afraid you don't understand the flow of money here at all. Google or others pay to be the default app for maps / search etc on things like iPhone. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-search-deal-doj-antitrust-suit-2020-10%3Famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/google-...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - dividedbyzero 5y ago

JCM9 5y ago

There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple and others are taking a stance of making it increasingly hard for Google and Facebook to do what they want to via updates now advertised as “features” that protect consumers. As these documents highlight Google knows consumers want this privacy and it scares the $&!& out of them. Interesting days ahead.

Vespasian 5y ago
Google even managed to incur heavy losses from offering cloud infrastructure services. A business which usually is a guaranteed golden goose. They are really bad at making money with anything that isn't advertising.
- tomrod 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure they're doing that to draw folks from AWS and similar.
  - ForHackernews 5y ago
    Yeah, but you'd have to be a fool to go. Google has proven over and over again that they don't value customer support or long term maintenance. They will get bored and sunset services you depend on, or switch off your entire business because some employee sent suspicious email on his gmail.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      GCP is very different than the consumer services.
      - ForHackernews 5y ago

lazyeye 5y ago

It used to be "don't be evil". Now its "hide, deny and obsfucate our evil".

filterfish 5y ago
Or put more plainly we're just a bunch of cunts.
- sthnblllII 5y ago
  No, the guy who takes your parking space is a cunt. Google is evil.
koheripbal 5y ago
I think a more useful life lesson is that an organization's motto is not a useful measure of its true internal or external ethics - regardless of what it says - regardless of the type of organization. A motto is, by definition, marketing. Even more generally, I worry about the trend on social media to value words so much more than actions.
- filterfish 5y ago
  In the early days they did seem to follow that motto so there was at least some cause to believe them.
- bogwog 5y ago
  Or better yet, that a large corporation and a mega corporation are two different beasts. The latter needs to be regulated. I disagree that a motto is just marketing fluff. Especially in smaller companies, a mission statement can provide guidance that, in practical terms, acts as a tool for decision making for every employee in the organization (and to some extent, partners and clients) But once they’re large enough where they could collapse the world economy if the CEO snorts a bad batch one day and decides to fire everyone, then that type of stuff is meaningless.
- rodgerd 5y ago

garbagetime 5y ago

It this point "used" is clearly a more accurate term than "user".

jeffbee 5y ago

Sounds like lots of people are going to have to re-take the "You Said What‽" training. But seriously why would a product manager know with certainty how different settings interact? The only person who really knows would be the authors of the features that read those settings, and possibly not even them. These systems are too complex, no intelligent person should claim to understand them perfectly.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Considering all the dark patterns they've implemented to force location tracking there's no way management doesn't know about what the settings are meant to accomplish.

arkades 5y ago

Earlier this week there was a post regarding Google and its utilization of private health information. A number of Googlers came forward to describe how very seriously Google takes user privacy and keeping inappropriate data from being shared across silos. I got the overall impression of Googlers taking the position of “you guys don’t know how seriously we take peoples privacy.” If any of those Googlers would please comment on how to square those statements with the featured article, I’d appreciate it.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Health care data is the only thing with regulations in the US. Everything else is fair game. That is how Google rakes in the billions. They aren't going to leave money on the table to satisfy an ethical code.
- tolbish 5y ago
  I wonder how much evil they could actually be getting away with if they wanted to. Imagine all of the trade secrets and national security secrets they could easily obtain by analyzing who is Googling what from where, or who is accessing their services from where.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jeffbee 5y ago
Which specific factual aspect of this story do you believe contradicts those claims? I'm a Xoogler, not a Googler, but in my post-Google experience I haven't seen anything that was even in the same league as Google's privacy controls. In my personal privacy threat model I think Google scores 10/10. They protect my data against external attackers, which in my view is the main problem faced by personal data, and their protections against insider risk are also excellent. Other places where I've worked, that you've definitely heard of, have security and insider risk practices that are a complete f-ing joke. There's nobody at Google who is "the DBA" who can just covertly access your data, there's no ad-hoc logs access (every logs access flows through a proxy that ensures only limited access for pre-defined purposes), and there are software controls that trigger privacy incident response (by a 24x7 user privacy incident response team) whenever an insider attempts to access user data in excess of their authority. In protocol buffer definitions, every field has an annotation for whether it contains private, sensitive, or non-private information so that even in crash dumps and debug logs those fields are censored before being printed. I really think Google has a pretty strong privacy story, compared to virtually every other company (except Apple and Microsoft) who leave themselves highly exposed to both outside and insider attacks, software (and even hardware) supply-chain attacks, accidental leaks, leaks into debug systems, poor encryption practices, and generally wanton behavior.

dlsa 5y ago

This cant be just location either. Anything you'd think of as private. I wonder what the privacy implications of using something like DDG on an android phone is like. I'm fairly sure google are quite desperately keen to grab any and all data from anything visited using the DDG app. I don't see any way to stop Google from doing it either.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

what about users who don't sign into their android phones with a google account and don't actively use google apps like maps or chrome or whatever they have? i suspect they still have your data but it isn't tied to "you" unless you tell them by linking who you are so you should be fine?

rantwasp 5y ago
so an android phone without the store? intriguing. at that point you might as well switch to a dumbphone. are dumb phones still a thing?
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  aurora store is a thing.
  - bozzcl 5y ago
    And F-Droid. And there’s plenty of sites to download APKs outside of the Play Store, though I don’t know how reliable they are.
    - mackrevinack 5y ago
      even just extracting the apk's and side loading then is good enough for 95% my use cases. there are show that key you extract, but you would still want something that is trustworthy though. tasker is what I've been using lately and you can automate the process a bit more. i turned off auto updates in the play store years ago after i got stuck with an app that had some bug in it, where it was working fine before the update. now i only update and app if something is broken or if i really need the new features it offers.
- notdang 5y ago
  There are plenty of other stores to chose from. The problem here is that there are some apps that don't work without Google services, and those are the apps that you need the most: banking apps, payment apps, Uber, etc.

bpodgursky 5y ago

Amusingly, I've shared my location permanently with a couple close friends on Google Maps, and Google will not shut up about it, reminding me every month about it. I get aggressive monthly warnings "Are you SURE you want to share your location with XX,YY,ZZ?". I wish there was a toggle where I could say "yes, I absolutely positively am OK with the privacy implications here, because I don't care very much; please forever stop bothering me."

aforty 5y ago
This isn’t the point of the article. The point is that you can’t share your data with your friends without sharing that data with Google the company as well.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  Going to have to say "duh" here. Short of an e2ee location sharing app, you have to send your location through an intermediary for your friend to see it.
  - dzdt 5y ago
    It is "duh" that google has access to the information as they relay it from your phone to another party. But you could imagine it being like the post office, where in the US it is a federal offense to read someone's mail en route. Google could convey the location information with a "sealed envelope" policy. But they don't.
  - folmar 5y ago
    > Short of an e2ee location sharing app Delta chat can do it for you.
  - Xelynega 5y ago
    I believe e2ee should be the default when I consent to share private information with someone through an intermediary. The libraries are already on every device with a web browser and the overhead is minimal, so IMO there's no excuse other than the intermediary wanting to look at the data.

_trampeltier 5y ago

At the same time, Google think allways I'm in germany on work, because our company has just one large internet connection for all company users from the whole world. And google does not even let me change the country.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
Yes that’s annoying. In the past you could use a country’s domain to choose Google’s localization but it’s not the case anymore. And their “ncr” (no country redirect) feature doesn’t work anymore. It’s one of the main reason I’ve been using Duckduckgo more and more.
JamesDeepDown 5y ago
Googles forced country localization is IMBECILICLY STUPID. I am currently in a foreign country. My English OS laptop with English browser has been logging in to gmail in English for years, and I ask Google search to show results in English for 5 years and EVERY TIME it tries to show the local language. Going to google.com is IGNORED, why?? Google engineers are paid $$$$$$$$ of dollars to implement THE MOST STUPID CODE I HAVE EVER HAD TO DEAL WITH AAAAARGH.
- notdang 5y ago
  Same for me, worse, I search for something in English and it shows me results in the local language. And if you think that SEO destroyed the English internet, try it in Spanish, there is literally nothing there, pure FB and Pinterest.
- danlugo92 5y ago
  Funny, I've been using google since forever in an spanish speaker country and it always correctly (when logged in) shows me results in english (I have it set it to english).
  - CamTin 5y ago
    I think the frustration is mainly that you have to be logged in and set some Google-specific setting in their application. A well-behaved HTTP server should simply honor the value of the Accept-Language request header regardless of what IP address a request is coming from.

sirius87 5y ago

From using Google servers for internet connectivity checks to NTP and DNS servers, Android has deep connections to Google's infrastructure. [1] https://e.foundation/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/e-state-of-degooglisation.pdf https://e.foundation/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/e-state-of-d...

QuadrupleA 5y ago

Google had a brilliant advertising business with AdWords originally, where the ads were simply based on the search term and not a bunch of Orwellian surveillance on the person searching. From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best. And per this article, those gains are clearly coming at the expense of user trust and goodwill, something not reflected in click thru rates and RPM. Here's hoping we can get past all this invasive retargeting / surveillance / privacy-invading crap and get back to straightforward contextual ads, like car parts ads on a hot rod website - our world would be better for it, and maybe Google could restore a little of its rapidly fading goodwill.

coliveira 5y ago
My opinion is that the target ads is just a cover, the real reason they want to track users is to give more data to their in-house AI system that learns what people do once they reach certain page. This knowledge (what people will do) is what is important to them, rather than simply showing certain ads. For example, if Google knows the profit potential of certain actions, they will raise the ad cost on that property by the true value, instead of relying on non-targeted auctions.
- nexuist 5y ago
  If this was true then every single ad campaign would be worth it then, no? I thought that lots of people try Google or FB ads with a couple thousand dollars and never recoup operating costs. If Google knows how much profit a certain page could bring then they could also tell you exactly what to price your product at to maximize returns.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    How would it profit Google?
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      They would charge you a fee for telling you that?

indymike 5y ago

I would love to have a control panel that lists who I'm sharing my location with. Not what apps. What people and companies, including secondary buyers. With an on/off toggle. And this list needs to include my cell phone carrier, the OS vendor, the hardware manufacturer and, perhaps even the government where there's no warrant. Then extend the model to other things... one can dream.

rantwasp 5y ago

what bothers me is the normalization of collecting this data in the first place. some people are outraged, but hey if google does it, are you really surprised when someone else does it? I have worked pretty hard to kick google out of my digital life. it’s hard but not impossible. what apple is doing with their privacy schtick has probably raised the alert level to red on the Borg and on the Klingon ships. There probably is going to be an intense struggle following with more things like this coming out.

takker 5y ago

Google dropped the "don't be evil" motto in 2015 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

Crash0v3rid3 5y ago
No they didn’t, it’s still there - https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

causality0 5y ago

To this day, if I scroll off screen on Google Maps and then hit the "center view" button I get nagged to allow Google to use my phone to wardrive even when wi-fi is turned off. It would be nice if I could use Google products without audibly wishing violent misfortune on their executives.

tobyhinloopen 5y ago

I always find it funny how articles like this are behind a “privacy” cookie wall.

julianmarq 5y ago

I saw some people saying that this makes them want to switch towards iphones next. I'm not gonna lie, I considered it for a moment too, like a year ago... But apple is now engaging in its own share of dark patterns and is now collecting data too. There have been multiple articles on the matter shared here even. Thinking that apple is better than google for privacy (or, even if it is right now, that it will remain so for any reasonable amount of time) is... overly optimistic, at best. Unless it chances paths, of course, which I don't see likely.

heavyset_go 5y ago
> There have been multiple articles on the matter shared here even. Here are the threads I'm aware of off the top of my head. What other threads should I look into? - Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments[1] - Apple reportedly dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained (2020)[2] - Apple puts more adverts in App Store after ad-tracking ban[3] - Apple to boost ads business as iPhone changes hurt Facebook[4] - Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties[5] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25777207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25777207 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27051736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27051736 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901868 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607386
- GoofballJones 5y ago
  1. Thanks..as it shows the article in question was full of holes, such as the Russians requiring an app be baked in and not being able to uninstall. This was false. 2. This is for iCLOUD backups. Yes, that's a problem. But you can turn off iCloud backups totally...and then use your computer to make the backup while tethered and THAT can be encrypted. If your security conscience, don't use iCloud back-up. Yes. 3. Adverts in the App Store aren't tracking you. They're adverts in the app store. I forget that when someone these days sees an ad, their face melts. 4. Again, Apple isn't sitting there looking over your shoulder watching everything you do for the ads. The ads are for the apps that are "free" and get revenue from the ads in their apps. Usually pushing people to pay the $1.99 for the app. Annoying, yes. On the level of Facebook or Google? Not even close. But keep an eye on this. 5. Apple took 3 years to fully cut ties with a supplier using child labor. Fully cut ties. They are no longer doing it...but took their sweet time. Again, hold their feet to the fire over this.

heavyset_go 5y ago

You can't even use most of the new Chromecast's features without enabling Web & App Activity tracking on your Google account. Web & App Activity tracking keeps detailed logs of every search term you use, every time you install or open an app, the sites you visit, etc.

grammers 5y ago

What really devastated me was when I found out that even if you try to keep yourself private, you'll get exposed by your friends: Just by tracking that you are regularly close to others, for example meeting for a camping trip, you suddenly get camping advertisements - probably because your friends searched for something or booked the trip via Gmail or whatever. I don't really know how it works, but it's awfully scary.

deleted 5y ago
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mixmastamyk 5y ago
They really like to tag and paste your telephone number into facebook messages as well. sigh

anticristi 5y ago

I hate to repeat it, but the US really needs its GDPR.

oblib 5y ago

Oddly, when loaded Google News this afternoon and clicked on "Local News" it showed me news for New York. I live in SW Missouri. I'm using Firefox with FB Container and Privacy Badger on a Mac mini (Late 2009).

alexander_gold 5y ago

https://cannablazeweed.net https://cannablazeweed.net

tomohawk 5y ago

the only way to fix this is to make it so that any information about a person is owned by that person, regardless of who is storing it or how it was collected. companies should have to pay rent to the data owners every year. the only exception should be information collected by the government with a court issued warrant.

deleted 5y ago

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intellaughs 5y ago

About two weeks ago I got an envelope in the mail from Google saying they were offering to pay $1000 per month to install a special router into your home that tracked everything regarding your internet usage. They disclosed everything they'd be tracking and said all the information recorded would be viewable by google. They even sent a $1 bill (I guess to prove they were serious). It was quite strange but really made me realize how invasive Google is planning to be in the future.

streamofdigits 5y ago

Surveillance capitalism will implode not because of its exceptionally bad karma but under the weight of its own economic stupidity. In the "Mystery of Capital" de Soto waxes lyrical about "why capitalism triumphs in the west and fails everywhere else": Spoiler alert, it is due to conceiving and protecting private property. Spoiler alert II: that was once upon a time in the west and it is no more. If wealth is built on a system that secures property and if that applies to land, tangible assets, intellectual property etc it sure as hell also applies to digital "land", information flows, data sovereign business models, entrepreneurial agency and all the value that those can in principle support. In fact the panopticon "platform" system, conceived by sociopaths and inflicted on western societies by corrupt politicians is more feudalism than capitalism in outlook (Complete with the modern day serfs plying the rented clouds). To those individuals salivating to be part of this malevolent trillion dollar club: a trillion is sizable "value", I'll grant you that. But its nothing like the value that would be generated if society as a whole was empowered to be part of a digital economy. You can also throw in democracy and humanistic ideals as a bonus.

petee 5y ago

Notably, when I decided to check my Android 11 privacy settings, first thing I noticed is that every setting page has a help icon at the top with an explanation what the settings are...except privacy, which is the only section with no help, and no explanation, and no 'report feedback' option

qwerty456127 5y ago

I rarely ever turn location (GPS) on and I always deny using WiFi to improve location precision. Do I still have location privacy problem?

worik 5y ago

My favourite: “This doesn’t sound like something we would want on the front page of the [New York Times].”

everywhere15 5y ago

Imagine your wifi also comes from Google if the Loon project come through...

alexander_gold 5y ago

I believe everything technology is not safe nowadays. https://superflyjetskis.shop https://superflyjetskis.shop

joelbondurant 5y ago

Google gonna Google.

h0nd 5y ago

This shows me in a most certain way, that it is no coincidence that it is impossible to deactivate location services quickly in CC on iOS.