
Google’s become an obsessive stalker - CapitalistCartr
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/14/google_location_location_location/
======
Lordarminius
I find it curious the tone of some responses on this issue. Google (and not
just google; FB, Bing,Baidu) snooping is not a petty issue that will just go
away. It is a matter of deep concern at par with any existential threat
mankind has ever faced; up there with climate change and nuclear war. Never
before has mankind had to face such an assault to privacy. The data google
collects is the next best thing to reading its users minds. This is all the
more scary because

1\. It is a private company 2\. state actors have a vested interest in
aligning with google and other such companies and (as the article points out)
will deliberately lapse in their regulatory obligations.

The privacy wars are on and google et-al have won the opening skirmishes. I
predict that in response to rising public awareness (not outcry, there is no
outcry) google and other invaders of privacy will come up with algorithms that
tone down recommendations and mask the amount of data being captured without
actually reducing it. The citizenry will be lulled into false complacency and
the encirclement will proceed apace.

Large unbridled Corporations with unchecked power have proven through history
to be venal and predatory. We are witnessing the birth of a new phase that
will leave a scar on mankind and make the sins of the Church, Hitler, North
Korea and every other despotic regime that has tried to limit human freedom
through the ages look amateurish if we do nothing about it now.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_We are witnessing the birth of a new phase that will leave a scar on mankind
and make the sins of the Church, Hitler, North Korea and every other despotic
regime that has tried to limit human freedom through the ages look amateurish
if we do nothing about it now._

Nazis killed approx 40M people. Communists add another 100-200M to that total.
Are you really suggesting that "large unbridled corporations" have proven
through history that they will kill more than 240M people?

The only mechanism I can think of by which google might even approach this is
by creating evil AI. Is that what you are referring to, or something else?

~~~
z5h
Tobacco killed 100 million. Sugary drinks alone are linked to 180000
deaths/year. (And of course big sugar lied to us
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-
ind...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-
shifted-blame-to-fat.html?_r=0)).

So, yes. Anything in the name of profit.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Yes, clearly murder and forced starvation is totally equivalent to people
making lifestyle choices that reduce their lifetime.

Clearly anyone selling soul food is just as guilty of murder (hate crimes?) as
the guy who shot up that church in Charleston. And don't get me started on
those murderous Punjabis, putting ghee on everything...

~~~
z5h
It's not the thing that's being sold that is the problem. It's the systematic
ways that the peddlers lie and game the system that prevent us us from making
the choice in "lifestyle choice".

Seems they got to you too. Or perhaps you're one of them.

~~~
cynicalkane
It's strange that yummyfajitas' post is flagged and killed, presumably for
asking a legitimate question in a sarcastic way that rubbed some biased and
oversensitive moderator the wrong way.

Contrast to this post, which accuses of him of being "one of them", presumably
part of a conspiracy to spread apologia for poor food choices on a hacker
interest forum!

An absurd claim, insulting, illogical, of no service to the conversation, but
remaining alive and upvoted. We can see further content-free insults in
replies to this post. This is the first time I've seen a post killed for
reasons that are obviously wrong. In addition, they are wrong in a dangerous
way, killing mere rhetorical sarcasm while allowing actual insults, of
negative worth, to run wild.

~~~
DanBC
> oversensitive moderator the wrong way.

Moderators didn't touch his post. His post was downvoted by users, and flagged
by users.

I'm not a mod, so I don't _know_ this, but it's pretty clearly what happened.

If you think it shouldn't be dead you should click the timestamp and then
click the [vouch] link.

~~~
cynicalkane
Thanks, I didn't know about the flag/kill procedure or the vouch link.

------
radarsat1
Honestly I'm mostly fine with Google providing me services and skimming a bit
of info on me in exchange, but I do find it annoying that after a recent
update to Photos, my phone asks me _every time_ I take a photo if Google can
"have it" for Maps. Fuck you Google, no you can't.

Somehow it's quite different to know they want to take something from my phone
and make it public, vs. just using some metadata for their statistics. At
least they ask first. But it really _does_ feel rather "stalky" after the 5th
time or so it's happened.

~~~
falcolas
> and skimming a bit of info on me

Is it really a "bit of info" though? Or is it your complete physical movements
made with your phone, every web address you type in, every website you travel
to (and search for) from Google search, every site you are are shown an
adsense ad upon, your detailed browsing habits via Google Analytics, the
entire contents of messages transcribed by Google Now, every app you purchase
and use...

They appear to have controls to limit how this data is used today - a very
good thing. However, we also have to trust every employee at Google now and in
the future, as well as any company which Google subcontracts out to now and in
the future, and any company which may eventually acquire Google, (not even
thinking about Governments) to also respect our privacy with regards to this
data.

~~~
MarkMc
> Or is it your complete physical movements made with your phone

You can turn off location tracking on your phone, can't you?

~~~
falcolas
Yes, but I have two thoughts about that:

Defaults matter.

They still track what IP you connect from, and can correlate this to a
physical address. I can connect to google and get search results tailored to
my physical location, even if location services is not allowed for their site.

~~~
randomnerdiness
Perhaps. However, I'm in AZ, and the 'tailored search results' are usually the
midwest or silicon valley.

I think it depends entirely on what your ISP is handing over for location
data. Mine clearly doesn't hand over anything useful.

------
projproj
This is the kind of thing I was interested in when I made Googley Eyes [0].
Googley Eyes makes a record of whether the pages I visit do or do not send
info about me to Google. Of the 11,571 pages I visited over the last couple of
months, Google knows about 52% of them.

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googley-
eyes/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googley-eyes/)

------
darren_
This whole thing seems to be based on that rather inaccurate article from the
other day about not being able to deactivate location tracking on android,
despite it being rather trivial to grab any recent android phone and verify
that you can in fact block individual apps, including google maps and the play
store, from having location access, and you can also deactivate location
history from the location history menu (I honestly don't even remember if it
defaults to on but i don't think it does?).

If the assertion is that you can't trust these privacy toggles then we're
getting into extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence territory.

disclaimer: googler, although i'm an iphoney one not an androidy one

~~~
dleslie
I stopped using Android because despite having disabled GPS and location
tracking I received a notification that I was X minutes from work, right after
I left the front door.

That was the last straw; I've stopped using Google products and services
entirely.

------
danblick
It's actually very easy to disable location tracking across all your Google
devices and services.

[https://myaccount.google.com/](https://myaccount.google.com/) and click
Privacy.

I did this and also cleared the (kind of cool, really) history they'd built up
over the years. It took maybe 10 minutes.

The amount of data Google had collected was impressive. It showed vacations
I'd forgotten about, airports I'd transferred in, that kind of stuff.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The cost to this is bigger than you think though: Google software becomes so
useless with it disabled you might as well just get someone else's software
entirely.

For instance, Google Maps can't even, on my local device, show me the last
couple places I searched for. Because if it isn't on the cloud, Google won't
store it at all. This is what initially drove me off to HERE Maps a few years
ago.

I've also had searches unable to even get me in the general local region,
because if I won't let Google track my every move in their history, they won't
bother to figure out what state I'm in for a search I'm running at the moment.

~~~
imh
This is a frequent pattern with their privacy controls. There's no granularity
and services become all or nothing. I just did the privacy checkup thing they
offer and for the "Web & app activity" part there's just a single checkbox.
Waze wanted my location either all of the time or it wouldn't work, with no
"Just when I use the app" option. (As an aside, I was kinda horrified by the
things Google had just assumed were ok. Opt out is a dark pattern.)

~~~
fixermark
I'm curious: What did they assume was okay that horrified you?

------
anotherarray
Google can be a huge troublemaker in countries with weak privacy laws.

If I google my friends name, I can see their college grades, most legal
occurrences (from company incorporation to lawsuits and alimony) and probably
the equivalent to their SSN.

~~~
themartorana
Has Google made this information public? Or are they just indexing it?

~~~
kuschku
They have turned it from "can only be found by a dedicated person" to "anyone
can find it".

Societies usually ban that difference.

~~~
mercutio2
"Societies usually"?

I know a few European cultures, most notably the Germans, make a big deal
about this difference, but I'm not aware of other cultures where
distinguishing between public-but-obscure and public-and-indexed is a thing.

In my opinion it's a terrible distinction to make, as it gives users false
comfort about what's actually unavailable to the public.

~~~
kuschku
Even the US seperates stalking from taking a picture of random people in the
background of a landscape picture.

The difference between "public and indexed" and "public but obscure" is huge.

It’s also the same difference as "taking a photo of outside" vs. "permanent
video surveillance of everywhere".

------
fixermark
It's interesting to look through the data Google collects about you. If you
use voice search on a mobile device, check out
[https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_so...](https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_source=help)
to see the history of audio snippets it's collected from you. It's neat to see
both what the voice-to-speech system heard and how it interpreted it.

(Note: this can be disabled
[[https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6030020?hl=en](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6030020?hl=en)],
but Google is collecting it de-anonymized to build a voice model of you
specifically so that speech recognition works better on all the devices using
Google Voice APIs. It's being done to improve the way the service works for
you).

~~~
ocdtrekkie
To be CLEAR: You can shut off your voice history being tied to your Google
account, but if you use Google Voice Search, Google owns your voice
recordings. Turning off the history merely means they permanently keep all
recordings of you with anonymous identifiers.

Keeping your history on, allegedly, means you can delete them manually, if you
remember to, but turning your history off guarantees you can never tell them
to delete the recordings, and they still keep them.

------
hullo
Google Photos for iOS is horrible about this - there are only two location
settings, (1) no location services or (2) always on. The sensible default
would of course be (3) on while I'm using this app. There's absolutely no
reason for photos to be (literally) tracking us while we're doing non-photo
things other than better-monetizing us for advertisers. Even if we nevermind
the privacy implications, stop burning my battery.

~~~
magicalist
> _Google Photos for iOS is horrible about this - there are only two location
> settings, (1) no location services or (2) always on_

Can't you just select "While using this app" for location services for any app
on iOS?

~~~
hullo
No, you're limited to the choices the app developer presents to you, and
Google Photos presents Always, which you can reject to get Never. I hadn't
even known it was an option previously, as they're the only app I have (had in
the past) that requests permanent ongoing location. And I didn't even notice
what I'd agreed to until my location services indicator wouldn't turn off, and
I had to track down what was triggering it.

------
gdulli
I cringe when I see someone's phone and they have GPS turned on. I can't
understand why anyone has it on 99% of the time. It's another service to drain
the battery and offer questionable value in exchange for tracking.

Maybe once a month I turn it on for a few minutes to get my bearings if I'm
walking in an unfamiliar part of the city.

~~~
on_and_off
Devil's advocate here : Awareness API.

By making apps aware of your physical condition (are you walking, standing,
running, at home, at work, etc ... ) we can make them smarter.

For exemple : -don't notify me about the daily techmeeting when I am in
another country in order to give a talk.

-automatically start recording my run when I start running, not 10 minutes afterwards when I remember to open the app.

It needs to be presented and explained to the users (actually the GPS
permission is necessary for any detection tied to the user's location) but it
can make apps way smarter.

[https://developers.google.com/awareness/](https://developers.google.com/awareness/)

~~~
mattnewton
Yeah, sounds like a dream for advertisers and not so much for users. This two
examples certainly don't sell it over increased battery life and privacy for
me. I think it should be opt in and I'm sticking with iOS.

~~~
on_and_off
It is very heavily recommended to opt in your users in this service (and
mandatory to ask the user's permission for the location detection anyway, the
most costly by far privacy & battery wise).

I am not sure how legal it would be to collect this kind of data without
asking for the user's approval first (not that it would stop all devs of
course).

Glancing at the doc, I might be mistaken, but it looks like on iOS, just like
on Android, you don't need to ask a permission in order to access to the
accelerometer.

------
peteretep
Andrew is the reason I stopped reading The Register, about ten years ago, due
to his incessant rambling about Wikipedia. Shocked to see he's found a new
corp to hate.

~~~
AlexandrB
Is he wrong though? Google _is_ trying to collect basically everything. I
still haven't heard a substantive argument about why this is ok.

~~~
MarkMc
What is wrong with the argument that says it's OK because they require your
permission to collect anything?

~~~
imh
They don't ask permission. They offer a cool service don't tell you what
they'll use that information for. Go through [0] and [1], and you'll probably
find at least one thing you didn't explicitly opt into. That fits my
definition of not requiring my permission. They have to ask.

[0]
[https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup/](https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup/)

[1]
[https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity](https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity)

~~~
MarkMc
> you'll probably find at least one thing you didn't explicitly opt into

Didn't you explicitly agree to Google's privacy policy [1] when you created an
account? Are you saying Google is using your data in a way that is not
described in their privacy policy?

[1]
[https://www.google.com.au/intl/en/policies/privacy/](https://www.google.com.au/intl/en/policies/privacy/)

------
throw2016
I find Google increasingly resembles the obese man in the Monty Python sketch
[1] and like him comes across as a creepy, unpleasant and odious entity.

Its insatiable mining of human actions only sinks it uncontrollably further
into its gluttony making it more and more oblivious and distant from anything
human reducing them to mere actions and patterns.

There is no place for human niceties like privacy here. It thrives on
dehumanization and the impersonal. Every single action is simply another data
point to be analysed, patterned and consumed.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXH_12QWWg8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXH_12QWWg8)

------
FussyZeus
> What the FCC did this year, with little fanfare, was cripple telecoms
> companies and wireless networks from doing what Google and Facebook do.
> That’s a very odd decision. If behavioural advertising is so bad consumers
> need an opt-out, how come you can opt out of your ISP's profiling, but not
> Google’s. How could that be?

Because you have a choice to use an Android phone, Google mail, and Facebook.
Many people do not have a choice which ISP to use, especially for broadband.
Android/Facebook are opt-in services.

Call me a fanboy, but since I've switched to Apple devices I have no desire to
switch back. Yes they're missing a lot of nice things that Androids have, like
customization and SD slots and what have you, but the app ecosystem is much
better and the entire OS doesn't creep on everything I do (at least not in any
way I can tell), and every app is a deluge of advertising. I've gone to pretty
great lengths now to remove Google from as much of my life as I can. Still
stuck in Chrome though, just because there doesn't seem to be anything better.

~~~
triplesec
But Apple is about as bad and invasive in its data practices. You prefer their
controlled integrated system, but that doesn't make Apple any better wrt data
snarfing.

~~~
macintux
Wow. No.

Apple makes it a point to do as much data processing as practical on the
phone. They don't override your preference to not have your location tracked.
They are developing new ground in differential privacy so when they do collect
data, it's both useful and not personally identifiable. They don't do
underhanded tricks with cookies to circumvent your browser privacy settings.
And they're not in the business of selling you to advertisers based on your
private data.

In short, there's no comparison between Google and Apple.

~~~
tanqueray
Does Google not have any interest in differential privacy practices?

~~~
macintux
That would run counter to their business model. They _want_ to know exactly
who you are.

~~~
tanqueray
They have used it to help anonymize data when collaborating.

I think they'd have a lot more trust if they explicitly gave information on
their data retention periods.

------
nl
This is... stupid.

 _SkyHook had originally come up with the idea of wardriving (as it was then
called), and building up a global Wi-Fi location database from the Wi-Fi
hotspots. Google took out an evaluation licence from SkyHook in 2005, figured
out how it worked, and then allegedly copied it. SkyHook sued for IP theft in
2010 and finally settled the case for $90m in 2015. The company was taken over
by TruePosition, a Liberty Media subsidiary, in 2014._

Well, no. There was a settlement, sure, but it's hard to imagine what IP
Google "stole". Does anyone really think it is hard to workout the WiFi
location thing? I could do it in a few days, and I don't have a background in
signal processing.

 _If behavioural advertising is so bad consumers need an opt-out, how come you
can opt out of your ISP 's profiling, but not Google’s. How could that be?_

[https://www.google.com/settings/ads/plugin](https://www.google.com/settings/ads/plugin)

Is the author really advocating that ISPs should be allowed to sell ads on
traffic they see?

~~~
wfo
>Is the author really advocating that ISPs should be allowed to sell ads on
traffic they see?

What? It is blatantly obvious from both the tone and content of the article
that the author is advocating that google and the like be banned from selling
the same kind of ads ISPs are.

------
bogomipz
Can someone explain why Google Maps needs/wants access to a phone's camera?

------
Oletros
Oooh, another Orlowsk's "report" against Google, I'm shocked

