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Location history data in Google Maps will soon be stored on user devices
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoReminds me of the wonderful idea, Data is the new toxic waste. https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/secure-futures-magazine/data-new-toxic-waste/34184/ https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/secure-futures-magazine/data-... There's too many awful or just self-dealing forces in the world which will legislate access to user's data. There's nothing your company can do to defend itself. The situation will only intensity and get worse, governments will only ever expand their legal access to the cloud's many data-keeps. Data is toxic. It's a risk to your company, given the 195 different nations which each might hit you up to demand uncomfortable & scary privileges. Having data will encourage people in your company to use it, which half the time is bad & scary. Don't have data. This goes against so many of my desires, is against my aspirations for the Information Age, but it seems so impossible to give users their own sovereignty, to leave them in control. Everyone else has all the power over the data, and that makes data toxic.
- neilv 3y agoI've used the data as toxic waste analogy before. Currently, data as toxic waste is still in the phase in which toxic waste was cavalierly dumped everywhere, including into water supplies. Industry loves this phase. Once org charts start going to jail, and companies start getting hit with existential levels of fines and lawsuits, then data will be in a much better phase of toxic waste.
- staplers 3y agoOnly after the major players have divested and created an alternative will it start appearing in headlines and public opinion that we should legislate it harshly.
- imglorp 3y agoBeautiful idea but I think it only applies to big, onshore players who can be sued or bullied. There are tons of little data brokers buying locations from cell companies and unscrupulous ad networks driving all those apps on your phone collecting locations for no benefit to you; these brokers are behind Delaware shell corps or offshore. Data is still gold to them.
- Laforet 3y agoBruce Schneier wrote a similar post back in 2016, and he was ridiculed pretty badly by everybody. Interesting to see how the opinion has shifted to the other extreme in less than 10 years. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y agoWhat I hate is there’s no way for me to say “I know the risks, I still want this feature”. I have been carefully making sure this data is collected for years and I use it all the time.
- kelnos 3y agoThat's not an option because Google has decided they don't want to bear the risks. Which, frankly, is entirely reasonable.
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y agoA great example of the tyranny of the majority[1] [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jakderrida 3y agoGood. While privacy's great, I'm just happy it won't autosuggest an address of a store I looked up 11 years ago, taking me to the wrong side of city to some hipster consignment shop I barely recognize instead of the bar my friends are at.
- tux2bsd 3y ago[dead]
- arebop 3y agoI sometimes query this to help me recall details from years ago, so I'm sad that the encroachment of very broad government surveillance and the rise to power of extremist politicians makes it unacceptably dangerous to continue to provide the service.
- sircastor 3y agoThis is why we can’t have nice things.
- Tempest1981 3y agoSnap a photo of all the interesting places you find yourself.
- oh_sigh 3y agoSometimes the thing you're looking for isn't something that you recognized as interesting in the moment.
- dotancohen 3y agoStory of my life. And my divorce.
- jbn 3y agothis makes me thing of the "baby shoes, never worn" short story by Hemingway.
- anigbrowl 3y agoYou can turn it off on Android, I did so a few years ago. Although my phone has a perfectly good GPS receiver, Google really dislikes having it turned off and constantly pesters me to turn it back on when using their Map product.
- londons_explore 3y ago
- tupac_speedrap 3y ago[flagged]
- sircastor 3y agoThey no doubt do, but wholesale availability of data makes law enforcement’s sidestepping of the 4th amendment super easy. If they’re using home-grown tools, they’re at least ostensibly obliged to observe it.
- j45 3y agoSincere question - does this mean it will be elsewhere, or is also elsewhere?
- calderwoodra 3y agoYes - stored locally on your device. Be sure to do regular backups to drive.
- j45 3y agoInteresting, thanks. It can be interesting to see from time to time. I wonder if that means it can't be accessed by google remotely once it's deleted.
- jmbwell 3y agoTraccar is relatively easy to set up, for those who might be interested in ditching Google for location history altogether.
- cobertos 3y agoAny conflicts with battery optimization? Google's location scraping felt more bulletproof because they seemed to prioritize it at the OS-level on Android over how normal apps function
- jmbwell 3y agoOn my iOS device, according to the battery report in the Settings app, the Traccar client does appear to use about 8% of my battery throughout the day. Google doesn’t show up at all, however, which doesn’t seem correct at all, so I’m not sure Google isn’t doing something to hide its true consumption from the OS.
- kelnos 3y agoI've been using OwnTracks for years now with no issues. I disabled battery optimization for it. Granted, I don't have a phone made by a manufacturer that has decided to add garbage to the OS to aggressively kill background apps. Only annoyance is Android has a thing where it doesn't allow apps that start on boot to automatically start getting GPS data, so on every boot you have to tap a notification to kick things off.
- cobertos 3y agoWhich phone manufacturer is that? I hate having to remember all the apps I disable battery optimization for. I think I currently have like 5 apps or so.
- mbirth 3y agoAs an early adopter of Google Latitude, my location database is currently about 400 MB. During a bout of Degoogling I‘ve imported my Google Location History Takeout into php-owntracks-recorder and used it happily with the OwnTracks app on my phones. About a year ago I’ve replaced it with PhoneTrack running on my NextCloud - while keeping the OwnTracks app as a client. These days, I want to check out Traccar and how it compares to PhoneTrack. I believe Traccar can also work with OwnTracks data. So if the Traccar client doesn’t behave, it’s a nice alternative.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y ago[flagged]
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoYou can mitigate it by cutting it down to three months of history. I also enabled enough privacy settings that they report long outdated home and work locations on the map.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y agoI DO NOT HAVE GOOGLE SIGNED IN to my android. Your solution is moot. It should not be enabled for me but it is. I understand the sentiment but why should we have to do it every time?
- xjay 3y agoSee also data sent to supl.google.com (Android default). > SUPL is used as part of the A-GPS (Assisted GPS) system to get a faster Time to First Fix. The problem is that Android's implementation automatically sends the IMSI (ID of the SIM card) to the SUPL provider for no apparent reason. And because Google is the default provider it's a big breach of privacy. [1] [1] https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Alt-Repo/supl-replacer https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Alt-Repo/supl-replacer
- morsch 3y agoWow, that's outrageous.
- shepherdjerred 3y agoI disabled location history a while ago for privacy reasons. It was _so_ cool to look back and see where I went during trips, or where I was on a given day in college, but it felt weird that it could potentially be exposed to everyone in a leak. It's great to hear that Google is making such a big move. Google is not known for respecting user privacy.
- lrem 3y ago> Google is not known for respecting user privacy. As a Googler, I’m always confused by this sentiment. We live in times where car manufacturers reserve the right to collect and sell any data the car can sense, up to and including your sex life. But somehow Google does not sell or share any of your data with anyone, makes it public how it fights a lot of law enforcement overreach, even outright exits markets and sunsets features and products due to privacy concerns… And is everyone’s top focus when it comes to privacy.
- sokoloff 3y agoPlenty of people find retargeting ads objectionable and a violation of user privacy for which Google is handsomely rewarded financially.
- someotherperson 3y agoTo play devils advocate, there are a few reasons off the top of my head: 1. More people have phones than cars 2. Cars take someone to a general location (i.e a shopping mall carpark) but phones are precise enough to say which section of a store (or hospital) you are in 3. Car manufacturers can't inherently link the passengers of the car to the driver, or to each other 4. Manufacturers of cars don't have ads as a core business model That's not to say what car manufacturers are doing isn't scummy -- it deserves more light. But what Google does affects more people in a much more complex way. Google doing this essentially takes attention away from these smaller cases of privacy violations -- if the Google issue is solved (and I'm using Google here as a supplement for "phone tracking") then the world would turn their focus to the smaller issues like car tracking.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 66yatman 3y agoA scheme to reduce storage size.
- vore 3y agoStore location history remotely: this is just a scheme to invade privacy and hoover up user data. Store location history locally: this is just a scheme to cut down on storage costs. There's no winning here, is there? Personally, I'm a fan of Google never giving the option to store location history remotely and this is a step in the right direction.
- ffpip 3y agoYes, because they are not promising to not use it for tracking. They are just offloading the storage costs to you.
- vore 3y agoDo you actually want them to store everywhere you've ever been on their servers because they would be using their storage instead? Because I don't, and I don't care to guess what the actual reason might be, because I'm just glad they don't want to do it anymore because it's better for everyone – removing remote storage removes a whole host of privacy issues.
- ffpip 3y agoI don't. I turned off location tracking long ago.
- oh_sigh 3y agoSomehow I doubt that the company running a site that gets 8 hours of video uploaded every second is concerned about the storage size of a bunch of (lat,lon,time) tuples.
- ajross 3y agoMap location data stored at, what, 1 minute granularity for the entire population of the world is... You know, I'm not going to bother to flip over an envelope on this one. That's at least a million times smaller than Youtube daily traffic. And I might be short a few orders of magnitude.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoI've had my google activity turned off for a long time. Every so often they add a new privacy item so I keep checking back in every few months. https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity . Unless you use google services a lot, I'd suggest turning it off. You will lose personalized searches though. That doesn't matter much to me though, as they seem to get worse over time and not better.
- summerlight 3y agoI don't like this change. What's going to be their proposal on multi device data sync, especially including web browsers? During my trip, I just let my phone log the path. Then I edit/browse it on my desktop since it's very inefficient to do so on my phone. With this change, this flow becomes almost infeasible or at least very tedious.
- modeless 3y agoI agree, but I think the headline is misleading. The data can still be backed up in the cloud. However, it will be end-to-end encrypted. It seems to me like the real issue is the inability of web apps to process end-to-end encrypted data. Are there any web standards efforts to solve this?
- nl 3y ago> the real issue is the inability of web apps to process end-to-end encrypted data We do this at verida.io Yes, the key management is the issue.
- _factor 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
- dns_snek 3y agoGoogle's messaging is misleading, too. The data is likely encrypted, but it's impossible for it to be encrypted "end to end" like they claim. > You can encrypt and upload a copy of your Timeline from this device to your Google Account, in case you lose your device or need to switch devices. You can recover the data after losing your device (which would be the only "end" in end to end encryption), which means that the data isn't actually E2EE, and thus Google or anyone with access to your Google account can still access it.
- Larrikin 3y agoIs there a self hosted solution to aggregating and viewing this data? I'm slowly moving away from Google and other companies clouds where I can. Would be nice to take this data out in takeout and explore it locally, but it's such a useful feature for looking back on my travels.
- kccqzy 3y agoI use Arc, a paid app to track my location that stores this data on my device and only on my device. It has a good but not great UI to explore this on device, make corrections on transport types which are by default inferred by machine learning, mark and manage points of interest. The UI is somewhat complex so it's not the easiest to use, but it's easy enough after a while. Since you explicitly mentioned moving away from Google, I'll note that the app has an opt-in integration with Google Places. You have to click a "Search Google Places" button to activate it so you won't accidentally use it. It's self-hosted in the sense that it's just an app. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/arc-app-location-activity/id1063151918 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/arc-app-location-activity/id10...
- physicles 3y agoThanks, I’ve been looking for something like this since forever. OwnTracks is the thing I previously heard about, but at the time it required you to set up your own mqtt server for data ingestion. I’d rather not have to maintain something like that.
- kelnos 3y agoI use OwnTracks. You don't need an MQTT broker (anymore?), though that is one of the options. A HTTP server works just fine, and there's an app (ot-recorder) that will handle saving your location history to disk.
- voussoir 3y agoI modified an open source GPX recording app called Trackbook to turn it into a 24/7 recorder, and I wrote about it here: https://voussoir.net/writing/obsessed_with_gpx https://voussoir.net/writing/obsessed_with_gpx I have a few recent commits in my repository that I haven't put into a versioned APK yet though. The output GPX files can be viewed on the PC with JOSM: https://josm.openstreetmap.de/ https://josm.openstreetmap.de/
- dataflow 3y agoWait, I have so many questions. So will this data still be exportable? Will it be stored with the OS or with Maps? If with Maps, what happens if someone clears the app data? If with the OS, what happens to people without the most recent Android versions? How do you prevent accidentally losing the data just because you moved phones or lost yours or cleared the app data?
- Harmon758 3y ago> If you’re getting a new phone or are worried about losing your existing one, you can always choose to back up your data to the cloud so it doesn’t get lost. We’ll automatically encrypt your backed-up data so no one can read it, including Google. https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-history-and-new-controls-coming-soon-to-maps/ https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-histor...
- kevinwang 3y agoInteresting. I hope that means the web UI will continue to work if one chooses to enable cloud storage
- snagglemouth 3y agoWhat could go wrong?
- jameson 3y agoIt would be nice to have users opt-in to save in Google drive (or any other cloud file storage like microsoft one drive or dropbox)
- Isomer 3y ago> If you’re getting a new phone or are worried about losing your existing one, you can always choose to back up your data to the cloud so it doesn’t get lost. We’ll automatically encrypt your backed-up data so no one can read it, including Google. https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-history-and-new-controls-coming-soon-to-maps/ https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-histor...
- alphabettsy 3y agoThere are apps which provide this same feature for people who want it, but I’m glad they’re making this change.
- DeathArrow 3y agoAgent: So, Mr. Jones, what were you doing in the Chinese Market on December 16th, 2023? Mr. Jones: Just grabbing dinner, nothing more.
- londons_explore 3y agoCan they please just encrypt it client side and store it setverside with some key known only to me? For example, encrypt it with a key unlockable with my login password. All cloudy stuff should operate that way really, to maintain the users privacy expectation which is 'this data is only accessible to me, not my government'.
- Harmon758 3y ago> If you’re getting a new phone or are worried about losing your existing one, you can always choose to back up your data to the cloud so it doesn’t get lost. We’ll automatically encrypt your backed-up data so no one can read it, including Google. https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-history-and-new-controls-coming-soon-to-maps/ https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-histor...
- pmontra 3y agoI wonder if they'll implement a way to send the location history to the other devices of the same customer. Furthermore I expect that there will a way to move that data to a new device, even a new phone replacing a dead one. It's one of the reasons to buy a new one, it happened to me 2 times out of 3 since I had modern smartphones. The safest and most convenient way would be an encrypted backup to Google Drive (for Android, I don't know where for iOS,) with a password that only the user knows, different from the one of the Google account.
- Harmon758 3y ago> If you’re getting a new phone or are worried about losing your existing one, you can always choose to back up your data to the cloud so it doesn’t get lost. We’ll automatically encrypt your backed-up data so no one can read it, including Google. https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-history-and-new-controls-coming-soon-to-maps/ https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-histor...
- t0bia_s 3y agoI guess LineageOS without gaaps do not save data location?
- walthamstow 3y agoThis product is by far the biggest, most useful, hole in my privacy stance. I'd never have an internet-connected camera in my home for example but I get genuine use and joy out of Google keeping 10 years' record of everywhere I've been, including the night I first hooked up with my wife and we fell into a taxi at 1am. Neither of us can properly remember it, but Google does.
- mcny 3y agoYes, the biggest gripe was it should be opt in but now given that is true I'm ok with location history. The sad part is that it isn't Google we are worried about anymore but rather the government. :/
- Harmon758 3y agoThe source for this is https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-history-and-new-controls-coming-soon-to-maps/ https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-histor.... > If you’re getting a new phone or are worried about losing your existing one, you can always choose to back up your data to the cloud so it doesn’t get lost. We’ll automatically encrypt your backed-up data so no one can read it, including Google. > These changes will gradually roll out through the next year on Android and iOS, and you’ll receive a notification when this update comes to your account.
- lakpan 3y agoTangential: Is anyone else getting burned out from having to transfer data between phones? Let me explain. I’ve been rocking the same iPhone backup since 2010 and I never lost anything… but now if I lose my phone I will lose my eSIMs, as well as any non-passkey 2FA. What next? Just recently I was unable to reinstall my eSIM for an hour and my headache was growing stronger as I imagined what all the services that (still) relied on SMS 2FA, all of which would not be activatable without it. Switching to a new phone now requires me going through my long app list to determine which apps “probably” need to be reactivated on the new phone, while still having access to the old phone. Back on topic: now I also have to worry about my location history being lost forever should I need to uninstall a buggy Google Maps (happens just about yearly)
- dotnet00 3y agoThis is part of why I hate 2FA implementations that force a specific app. One of the sites I have to be able to log into added 2FA that requires a specific app, even more annoyingly, if setup with another app, the setup isn't outright rejected, it just produces the wrong totp. It's much more convenient to have a yubikey+backup or something with a sane backup/sync system (eg password managers like Bitwarden).
- toomuchtodo 3y agoCan’t speak to eSIM problems, but I’ve moved as much to synced passkeys as possible, and the last of my 2FA/MFA in Bitwarden will be migrated as those sites support passkeys. As long as the data on my device is synced to iCloud storage or backups, that meets my needs. If the UX around an app is not great when switching phones or requires some esoteric incantations, I just won’t use it.
- lakpan 3y ago> As long as the data on my device is synced to iCloud storage But is it though? That’s the major catch. Something as important as Google Authenticator is not backed up, so you must enable sync to your account to ensure you don’t lose it (which wasn’t a thing at all until recently)
- engineer_22 3y agoGoogle getting tired of the subpoena requests... "Let's just store it on the phone let the LEO deal with it themselves"
- Nett23 3y agoSo we won’t be able to get real time location from desktop as we currently do when accessing Timeline on computer??
- Nett23 3y agoSo we won’t be able to view real-time location of Timeline on a desktop from google account anymore??