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> Location History is turned off by default, so a user must take several affirmative steps before Google begins tracking and storing his Location History data.

> Location History is turned off by default, so a user must take several affirmative steps before Google begins tracking and storing his Location History data. Do people really think Google isn't tracking location data without this setting enabled? How would anyone (save for a whistleblower) know? Location history seems like the data Google lets you collect/see for yourself, and not the totality of location data (which includes data collected from nearby wifi networks, nearby cellphones, and other bluetooth devices) that google collects. > Even after a user opts in, he maintains some control over his location data. He can review, edit, or delete any information that Google has already obtained. This is pretty misleading. You can see the location information your device sent to google, but you can't see or delete the assumptions that google has made about you based on that data. A list of GPS coordinates showing where you frequently go on Saturday nights isn't what people are concerned about Google having. The fact that those GPS coordinates show that you spend hours at, for example, a gay bar is more of an issue. It doesn't matter if you delete the list of GPS coordinates from your google account because what you can't delete is the "This user is gay and often goes to gay bars on Saturdays" flag that google put there the instant they got that data. No matter what you delete that data stays with Google along with the "here's how long this user stays at the gay bar, when they usually leave, where they go afterwards, and who they are with when they do" flags. I think what happened to this guy (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike...) is a good indication that the entire system and the way it's being used by police is flawed and dangerous. Even worse, the situation with google is just the tip of the iceberg because it's not just our phones that are tracking us. It's also our cell phone companies, the random cameras and license plate/toll transponder readers we pass by, our "smart" cars, etc. There's so much tracking going on that the typically American has zero control over at all, but which police (and others) could tap into. We really need more protections against this.

ta8645 2y ago
My mother was told that she spent over 200 hours shopping last month. When she looked into it, Google had tracked all the time spent at the retail store she operates. It was amusing and annoying at the same time. She never asked Google to track her location.
- autoexec 2y ago
  Told by Google? Are they giving people stats like that? How did she get the message?
  - acomjean 2y ago
    They send an email. “You're receiving this email because you turned on Location History, a Google Account-level setting that creates Timeline, a personal map of your visited places, routes, and trips. You can view, edit, and delete this data anytime in Timeline. Timeline is changing. To avoid losing visits and routes, update your settings by December 8, 2024.“ ……
Hnrobert42 2y ago
I completely distrust Google. I have no Google apps on my iPhone. I don't use any Google services. But I do not believe they have any other identity-linked location data. The way you would know is that there would be an article about the police requesting it.
- autoexec 2y ago
  > The way you would know is that there would be an article about the police requesting it. I think police just send requests to google for location info without specifying how that data was obtained. It's either, "Tell us everything you know about the location of this user between timestamp one and timestamp two", or "Tell us everything you know about all persons within however many miles of this location between timestamp one and timestamp two" and they don't bother sending requests like "Give us the data from your Location Reporting feature" or "Give us all the data from your Find My Phone feature" or "Give us all the data from your Nearby Connections API"
vineyardmike 2y ago
> Do people really think Google isn't tracking location data without this setting enabled? How would anyone (save for a whistleblower) know? Frankly I think that Google wont track me if I flip the bit (bugs not withstanding). Maybe I’m a fool. Do I trust mega corps? No, but I trust them enough to not blatantly lie when there’d be huge legal repercussions. They’re a massive corporation with tons of lawyers. They have an huge reputational risk, and they are already known to track a lot of data. Ignoring the user would be a massive violation. I’m sure there is massive legal penalty to this, enough to make the company care about being honest. You can find the most useless crap they stored it you do a data takeout request, so what’re the odds that entire teams of people have been secretly working on something violating laws and agreements and everyone including legal has just turned a blind eye? Everywhere I’ve worked required privacy and legal reviews just to touch data that could be a location, nevermind store or use it associated with a user. Frankly the lack of whistleblowers or leaks should be a massive sign that it’s not happening. Google has been terrible at avoiding leaks, and everyone working there seems to be jaded after the layoffs rocked the company. Regarding the “gay bar” anecdotes - I think there are some weak protections around “derivative data” in some jurisdictions but this is likely a gap in laws. There is a chance that it could be considered derived location and be purged too. Ps totally agree on the point about police abuse though.
- autoexec 2y ago
  > They have an huge reputational risk I don't understand this argument. The most hated corporations in the US are all insanely rich and are at zero risk of going out of business even though most people hate them. After a certain point, corporations have basically nothing to fear from bad press. Google specifically has been found guilty of violating the law and people's privacy on numerous occasions already, including misleading users into thinking they had turned off location tracking in their account settings even though Google was still collecting that information. Here's a short and very incomplete list: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/google-privacy-settlement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/google-privacy... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-sued-over-biometric-data-collection-without-consent/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-sued-o... https://www.androidcentral.com/google-faces-privacy-lawsuit-over-tracking-users-apps-without-consent https://www.androidcentral.com/google-faces-privacy-lawsuit-... https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/google-settles-5-billion-consumer-privacy-lawsuit-2023-12-28/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/google-settles-5-billion-consu... https://apnews.com/article/google-chrome-privacy-lawsuit-settlement-203cc5063f1a1d4013de1900d9376814 https://apnews.com/article/google-chrome-privacy-lawsuit-set... What reputation does Google have to protect at this point? They've repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to break the law when it's convenient for them and even after being caught they've generally profited from doing so and at no point were they in danger of going out of business due to punitive fines. > Frankly the lack of whistleblowers or leaks should be a massive sign that it’s not happening. whistleblowers are extremely rare. The few protections they have are being reduced all the time, and the risk is huge. Very few people will give up their career and risk becoming unhirable.
skybrian 2y ago
That link is a story from 2020 about a geofence warrant. It appears that around the end of last year, Google changed their system to store location on the device (with optional encrypted backups), so warrants like that won't work anymore. More info: Is This the End of Geofence Warrants? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/end-geofence-warrants https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/end-geofence-warrants It might not be completely over. There might be other other location stored somewhere. But, it's important to celebrate the win when something like this happens.
- autoexec 2y ago
  If that chance actually goes on to protect people, I'll agree that it's a good thing! We'll know when time goes on and nobody else ends up being arrested because the police when fishing using location data I guess.
gruez 2y ago
>Do people really think Google isn't tracking location data without this setting enabled? How would anyone (save for a whistleblower) know? [...] You can't, in the same way you wouldn't know whether Carl Sagan really has an invisible dragon in his garage or not. It's impossible to prove a negative. >It doesn't matter if you delete the list of GPS coordinates from your google account because what you can't delete is the "This user is gay and often goes to gay bars on Saturdays" flag that google put there the instant they got that data. Is there any evidence this actually happens? The bike thief example you linked is more straightforwardly explained with police using a geofence warrant, rather than some ML system that recorded "this guy bikes at 4pm to 6pm".
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- autoexec 2y ago
  > You can't Sounds like a good reason not to trust them. That said, it's not impossible to be reasonably assured that our data isn't being stored or used inappropriately, but that would require strong regulations which protected that data and a proven record of companies being caught and facing meaningful consequences for violating those regulations. It'd be nice if we had strong whistleblower protections as well. Maybe a massive bounty to anyone who can prove to regulators that their company is violating customer's privacy would help. > Is there any evidence this actually happens? Well, yeah. That's literally Google's entire business model. They collect as much data as they can about you, so that advertisers can request their ads to be show to certain segments of the population. That's what targeted advertising is. Nobody is sending Google updates on their lives, google just makes a bunch of guesses and inferences using the massive amounts of data they collect about you, and as long as they are correct most of the time it pays off for advertisers. Google isn't alone in that either. Many many companies do it, as well as data brokers. You can be extremely specific in who you target. See for example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-data-brokers-selling-your-personal-information/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-data-brokers-selling-your-p... Among the worst are lists of people with mental illness, dementia, poor education/literacy, low intelligence, etc. I doubt Google lets you target people based on predatory lists like that, but they might keep them for their own uses. They have collected the test scores and grades of a lot of children through schools that force students to create google accounts and use chromebooks. It'd be pretty easy for them to sort people into buckets like "smart" or "dumb". Lots of companies privacy polices state specifically that they collect this kind of data. For example, here a company that collects "Personal Information used to create a profile about you, which may include your preferences, reading or writing levels, abilities, aptitudes, and other data or analytics provided about you or your account by our third-party partners or data aggregators. " (https://www.captivoice.com/capti-site/public/entry/privacy_policy https://www.captivoice.com/capti-site/public/entry/privacy_p...)

ta8645 2y ago

My mother was told that she spent over 200 hours shopping last month. When she looked into it, Google had tracked all the time spent at the retail store she operates. It was amusing and annoying at the same time. She never asked Google to track her location.

autoexec 2y ago
Told by Google? Are they giving people stats like that? How did she get the message?
- acomjean 2y ago
  They send an email. “You're receiving this email because you turned on Location History, a Google Account-level setting that creates Timeline, a personal map of your visited places, routes, and trips. You can view, edit, and delete this data anytime in Timeline. Timeline is changing. To avoid losing visits and routes, update your settings by December 8, 2024.“ ……

Hnrobert42 2y ago

I completely distrust Google. I have no Google apps on my iPhone. I don't use any Google services. But I do not believe they have any other identity-linked location data. The way you would know is that there would be an article about the police requesting it.

autoexec 2y ago
> The way you would know is that there would be an article about the police requesting it. I think police just send requests to google for location info without specifying how that data was obtained. It's either, "Tell us everything you know about the location of this user between timestamp one and timestamp two", or "Tell us everything you know about all persons within however many miles of this location between timestamp one and timestamp two" and they don't bother sending requests like "Give us the data from your Location Reporting feature" or "Give us all the data from your Find My Phone feature" or "Give us all the data from your Nearby Connections API"

vineyardmike 2y ago

> Do people really think Google isn't tracking location data without this setting enabled? How would anyone (save for a whistleblower) know? Frankly I think that Google wont track me if I flip the bit (bugs not withstanding). Maybe I’m a fool. Do I trust mega corps? No, but I trust them enough to not blatantly lie when there’d be huge legal repercussions. They’re a massive corporation with tons of lawyers. They have an huge reputational risk, and they are already known to track a lot of data. Ignoring the user would be a massive violation. I’m sure there is massive legal penalty to this, enough to make the company care about being honest. You can find the most useless crap they stored it you do a data takeout request, so what’re the odds that entire teams of people have been secretly working on something violating laws and agreements and everyone including legal has just turned a blind eye? Everywhere I’ve worked required privacy and legal reviews just to touch data that could be a location, nevermind store or use it associated with a user. Frankly the lack of whistleblowers or leaks should be a massive sign that it’s not happening. Google has been terrible at avoiding leaks, and everyone working there seems to be jaded after the layoffs rocked the company. Regarding the “gay bar” anecdotes - I think there are some weak protections around “derivative data” in some jurisdictions but this is likely a gap in laws. There is a chance that it could be considered derived location and be purged too. Ps totally agree on the point about police abuse though.

autoexec 2y ago
> They have an huge reputational risk I don't understand this argument. The most hated corporations in the US are all insanely rich and are at zero risk of going out of business even though most people hate them. After a certain point, corporations have basically nothing to fear from bad press. Google specifically has been found guilty of violating the law and people's privacy on numerous occasions already, including misleading users into thinking they had turned off location tracking in their account settings even though Google was still collecting that information. Here's a short and very incomplete list: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/google-privacy-settlement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/google-privacy... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-sued-over-biometric-data-collection-without-consent/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-sued-o... https://www.androidcentral.com/google-faces-privacy-lawsuit-over-tracking-users-apps-without-consent https://www.androidcentral.com/google-faces-privacy-lawsuit-... https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/google-settles-5-billion-consumer-privacy-lawsuit-2023-12-28/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/google-settles-5-billion-consu... https://apnews.com/article/google-chrome-privacy-lawsuit-settlement-203cc5063f1a1d4013de1900d9376814 https://apnews.com/article/google-chrome-privacy-lawsuit-set... What reputation does Google have to protect at this point? They've repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to break the law when it's convenient for them and even after being caught they've generally profited from doing so and at no point were they in danger of going out of business due to punitive fines. > Frankly the lack of whistleblowers or leaks should be a massive sign that it’s not happening. whistleblowers are extremely rare. The few protections they have are being reduced all the time, and the risk is huge. Very few people will give up their career and risk becoming unhirable.

skybrian 2y ago

That link is a story from 2020 about a geofence warrant. It appears that around the end of last year, Google changed their system to store location on the device (with optional encrypted backups), so warrants like that won't work anymore. More info: Is This the End of Geofence Warrants? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/end-geofence-warrants https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/end-geofence-warrants It might not be completely over. There might be other other location stored somewhere. But, it's important to celebrate the win when something like this happens.

autoexec 2y ago
If that chance actually goes on to protect people, I'll agree that it's a good thing! We'll know when time goes on and nobody else ends up being arrested because the police when fishing using location data I guess.

gruez 2y ago

>Do people really think Google isn't tracking location data without this setting enabled? How would anyone (save for a whistleblower) know? [...] You can't, in the same way you wouldn't know whether Carl Sagan really has an invisible dragon in his garage or not. It's impossible to prove a negative. >It doesn't matter if you delete the list of GPS coordinates from your google account because what you can't delete is the "This user is gay and often goes to gay bars on Saturdays" flag that google put there the instant they got that data. Is there any evidence this actually happens? The bike thief example you linked is more straightforwardly explained with police using a geofence warrant, rather than some ML system that recorded "this guy bikes at 4pm to 6pm".

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
autoexec 2y ago
> You can't Sounds like a good reason not to trust them. That said, it's not impossible to be reasonably assured that our data isn't being stored or used inappropriately, but that would require strong regulations which protected that data and a proven record of companies being caught and facing meaningful consequences for violating those regulations. It'd be nice if we had strong whistleblower protections as well. Maybe a massive bounty to anyone who can prove to regulators that their company is violating customer's privacy would help. > Is there any evidence this actually happens? Well, yeah. That's literally Google's entire business model. They collect as much data as they can about you, so that advertisers can request their ads to be show to certain segments of the population. That's what targeted advertising is. Nobody is sending Google updates on their lives, google just makes a bunch of guesses and inferences using the massive amounts of data they collect about you, and as long as they are correct most of the time it pays off for advertisers. Google isn't alone in that either. Many many companies do it, as well as data brokers. You can be extremely specific in who you target. See for example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-data-brokers-selling-your-personal-information/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-data-brokers-selling-your-p... Among the worst are lists of people with mental illness, dementia, poor education/literacy, low intelligence, etc. I doubt Google lets you target people based on predatory lists like that, but they might keep them for their own uses. They have collected the test scores and grades of a lot of children through schools that force students to create google accounts and use chromebooks. It'd be pretty easy for them to sort people into buckets like "smart" or "dumb". Lots of companies privacy polices state specifically that they collect this kind of data. For example, here a company that collects "Personal Information used to create a profile about you, which may include your preferences, reading or writing levels, abilities, aptitudes, and other data or analytics provided about you or your account by our third-party partners or data aggregators. " (https://www.captivoice.com/capti-site/public/entry/privacy_policy https://www.captivoice.com/capti-site/public/entry/privacy_p...)