
Fearing data privacy issues, Google cuts some Android phone data for carriers - jmsflknr
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-data-exclusive-idUSKCN1V90SQ
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RcouF1uZ4gsC
This actually seems like useful data that actually can be used to make the
lives of the consumer (as opposed to the advertiser) better. It would be great
if Google would open this up and make it available publicly, so we could have
good data on what carrier has coverage where.

Having it available publicly, I think, would also spur carriers to increase
their data coverage.

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mehrdadn
I don't buy the "privacy concern" excuse for this one at all. It almost feels
like something one would do purely to spite or trick the regulators and/or
consumers for caring about privacy.

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makomk
This effectively provided carriers with aggregated, deidentified information
about people's locations. It's easy to see from the problems with things like
Strava's heatmaps just how much of a privacy headache this could be and how
hard it would be to ensure that nothing sensitive leaked out. Also, even if
they did people are sensitive enough about privacy that with the right spin it
could be turned into a muck-raking story and readers would believe it.

~~~
PeterisP
If you're a carrier then you can do coarse-grained detection of everyone's
location by timing-based triangulation - modern cell phone standards _require_
knowing your distance from the cell tower (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_advance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_advance)
for example) so it's measured (and thus can be recorded if the carrier wants)
as part of every keepalive connection and if you're in range for more than one
tower, which is almost always, you can do triangulation.

Of course, getting GPS data will be more accurate, but you should assume that
it's unavoidable that the carrier can know roughly where all the phones are
right now.

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liability
I wager that coarse-grain location data is not so coarse these days. My
carrier seems to know the instant I crossed a border for instance, sending me
a text message about it within seconds. Years ago people used to get nailed
with roaming charges simply because they were near a border and happened to
accidentally get connected to a tower across the border, but that's not
happening anymore. Their system knows enough about your location to know if
you are across the border or just near it.

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pdkl95
Coarse-grain location data becomes very revealing when you have enough
timestamped data points. The NSA's CO-TRAVELER[1] program only needs to watch
which towers cell phones use to build a very accurate map of each phone's
pattern-of-life (where does a phone regularly travel/idle) and social
interaction network (e.g. which phones travel/idle together).

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-
nsa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa-is-
tracking-people-right-now/634/)

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75dvtwin
Seems like one of the decisions a consumer should make, and not phone OS
provider in this case.

My overall sentiment is that any actively enforced regulation, is often used
as a weapon against competitors, or as a weapon to racketeer money from a
business.

(whether it is privacy, patent enforcement, copy right enforcement,
nondiscrimination and so on).

Therefore, what's missing, generally, is the complimentary framework to to
make sure that actively enforced policies are not abused.

I do not know how exactly those complimentary no-abuse laws would work, but I
think they have to be part-and-parcel of every legislation, and should be
voted for at the same time.

Without it, we do not have a truly 'fair competition and instead business
compete on whose team of lawyers is more creative and more aggressive.

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lugg
We don't have truly fair competition anyway.

Giving this right to consumers is equal to taking it away. Carriers will
simply make you sign a waiver on signup that lets them take whatever they want
anyway.

You may think that market competition will weed those carriers out by my
dollars voting elsewhere but I'm pretty sure it won't, at least not in my
lifetime, if ever, given how many people gladly sign over not only their data
but my data as well to places like Facebook every day.

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cameronbrown
At least people choose to give FB/Google their data. Carriers have no right to
it.

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blackoil
Google is near monopoly on <500usd mobiles and maps. So it is difficult for
users to exercise the right to not use them.

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hammock
Could this not be about privacy, but have anything to do with Google preparing
to launch its own wireless service (no not Google Fi, but maybe Dish Network)?

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natch
Maybe Google is realizing that the carriers' monetization of your personal
data is turning the carriers, even more than before, into Google's
competitors.

Google wants to keep your data for themselves.

In this light, the wording of the headline is a nice PR win for Google. Makes
me wonder if they perhaps wrote that headline themselves and fed it to the
news services.

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takdirm
Google should protect consumer privacy data. Because every consumer certainly
does not want his privacy data to be misused by any party. Therefore, the
steps taken by Google in my opinion are very appropriate. That way, we as
customers can feel safe.

[https://klikfix.com/assets/images/v3/desktop/landing-
heroban...](https://klikfix.com/assets/images/v3/desktop/landing-herobanner-
object.png)

