
Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data - tonyztan
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3bnyv/google-demanded-tmobile-sprint-to-not-sell-google-fi-customers-location-data
======
Despegar
I mean sure. Google certainly doesn't want wireless carriers to compete with
them in advertising, and everyone having access to location data from
smartphones just devalues Google's own access.

[https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-
locatio...](https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locations-
even-when-location-services-are-disabled/)

~~~
Ajedi32
The big difference is Google doesn't sell that data to third parties; they
just use it for ad targeting. There's a big difference between the company
that makes my phone's OS knowing my location, and anyone willing to pay a few
bucks knowing the same.

(Also it looks like in the situation described in the article you linked, they
didn't even use the data for ad targeting: "we never incorporated Cell ID into
our network sync system, so that data was immediately discarded, and we
updated it to no longer request Cell ID".)

~~~
thefounder
As far as the advertising is concerned Google is no different(and so FB etc).
Anyone with few bucks will know your location or better said will target you
with ads. With Google they won't target only by location because as you said
Google makes the OS so it knows pretty much everything about you.

~~~
vkou
Please show me where I can buy thefounder's location data from Google. Which
service is that, and how much do I need to pay? I can't find it at
[https://www.google.com/about/products/](https://www.google.com/about/products/)

> better said will target you with ads.

The difference between selling location data, and selling ad targeting, is the
difference between actively stalking someone, and sending unsolicited spam to
"Current resident" at "Every address in a city block".

What harm can I inflict to you, via targeted ads? Some. You can think of some
creative ways to do so, but it's not a very effective way to inflict harm.

What harm can I inflict to you, via buying your location data? A hell of a
lot.

If you don't trust Google to be a good steward of your data, that's one thing.
But let's not conflate selling your data, with selling the ability to mass-
advertise to a demographic that includes you.

~~~
lancesells
> What harm can I inflict to you, via targeted ads? Some. You can think of
> some creative ways to do so, but it's not a very effective way to inflict
> harm.

Do you see how people have weaponized social media through data? Google ads
might not have been used in a nefarious way just yet but that's likely because
it hasn't been thought of.

~~~
vkou
With ratings, on a scale of one to ten, how would you compare the individual
harm of someone showing you a demographic-targeted ad[1], to someone having
the real-time location data sufficient to start _physically_ stalking you?

What about someone showing you an untargeted ad? Where would that fit in?

[1] Or, if you prefer, a remarketing ad, instead. I have very little patience
for those.

~~~
taneq
The harm to me isn't the harm of someone showing _me_ a demographic-targeted
ad, the harm is someone showing _everyone_ demographic-targeted ads designed
to manipulate public opinion.

Remember how everyone got very hot and bothered about precisely this thing
happening in a recent U.S. election?

~~~
vkou
Why are cookie-based demographic-targeting ads that manipulate public opinion
bad, while demographic-targeting ads on television, in magazines, etc, are
fine? Is it because more targeted ad spend is more efficient?

If your problem is that advertising is used to manipulate public opinion -
consider - why do we even allow political campaigns and paid speech? Its only
purpose is to manipulate public opinion, and to trick stupid voters into
voting for bad people.

I'm afraid your position is not entirely ideologically consistent with how we
determine what kind of political speech is allowed, and is not allowed.

------
linsomniac
So many people are saying "this is just further evidence of Google doing
evil".

Unpopular opinion: I feel like this is further evidence of Google being good
stewards of user data.

There are many reasons Google may want to protect this data: They don't want
user backlash from revelations like this, they don't want to have to be
legislated, they don't want the PR spend of having to recover from such
reporting. Or it could be that it is a company built of people who find such
protection to be important.

~~~
jklinger410
Google, data point for data point, is one of the best stewards of data
potentially in history.

They have more information about you that they choose not to sell than you can
even imagine. They literally set the high-bar for PII and other types of
tracking data.

The only ones who know nearly as much are Telcos and they have been openly
selling and sharing all of your info to governments and shady shell
corporations since day 1.

Edit - Forgot that Facebook is catching up to Google on data and they have
been a leaky cup since day one as well.

~~~
50656E6973
Selling mass location data to the highest bidder is indeed extremely slimy and
even a threat to "national security".

But the fact that Google (or any centralized entity) has aggregated so much
detailed information on billions of people's personal lives is itself a threat
to global/national security.

What happens when that data is hacked/leaked and _then_ sold to the highest
bidder (who isn't interested in advertising)? That data could be easily
weaponized for a shocking/devastating attack the likes of which we have not
seen since the first atomic bomb.

~~~
linsomniac
Are you familiar with the design of the Google systems WRT securing this data?
Based on the revelations Snowden was able to do, and a similar level of
familiarity with Google's security measures, it sounds like Google even has
the NSA beat as far as keeping data secure. In short: Even the people doing OS
and hardware level maintenance of the machines in question don't have access
to this data.

But I'm on the outside looking in, someone with more hands on can probably
provide more details.

~~~
50656E6973
>Even the people doing OS and hardware level maintenance of the machines in
question don't have access to this data.

Are you implying Google can't access their own data?

100% security is a dangerous myth. No internet connected system is impervious
to hackers.

------
piyush_soni
How people's sentiments change here based on who tries to protect their
privacy. If it's Apple, "wow, they are god's own people with purest intentions
of protecting users' privacy". When Google does it : "Yeah, because they want
to _sell_ it themselves so obviously they don't want any competition".

~~~
penagwin
One is a massive advertising company that makes the vast majority of it's
money on advertising and has a history of invasive privacy issues.

The other one AFAIK doesn't sell user data, has publicly denied to help the
FBI (Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied), and
has put in a large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main
arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down).

Obviously this doesn't mean apple doesn't do bad things behind the scenes, but
based on the information available to us is why people trust them more with
privacy then google.

~~~
kllrnohj
> Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied

Google literally lead the charge on this with their transparency report for
government data requests and won huge victories in allowing for the reporting
of things like FISA requests.

It's great that Apple has followed Google's lead and also publishes a
transparency report, but their own report also clearly shows that they _DO_
comply with government requests:
[https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html](https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html)

And both Google & Apple have comparable percentages of requests honored per
their own reports.

Regardless an "assume complied" is an illogical position to take here. Assume
a company did work that they didn't have to for one-off requests? That's a
safe thing to assume they _didn 't_ do. Assume they did nothing, because
that's way easier, cheaper, and simpler for them. Which means assume they
didn't help anyone, including the FBI.

> large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of
> why IOS/OSX is so locked down).

No. iOS / OSX are locked down to prevent competition. There's no privacy
benefit in keeping the user from poking at their own device.

Apple did a lot of work specifically to enable apps to do things like track a
user's location in the background. Things that didn't used to be possible, but
which Apple put in work to do. The only significant thing they did here on iOS
was make it a runtime permission, which other platforms have similarly done.
OSX continues to have no real restrictions or enforcement for apps, except to
try and prevent you from installing them outside of the app store.

They put more effort into bragging about their privacy than they did in
actually improving privacy. Advertising turns out to be extremely effective,
as Apple frequently proves.

------
vanattab
Ask HN: Is anyone here happy with Google Fi service? I ordered a Pixel 3 phone
directly from Google Fi and signed up for service with Google Fi the end of
December. When I ordered the phone it showed up as in stock and estimated I
would get my phone by the 4th of January. On the 2nd I got an email saying
that the phone shipping was delayed and I would receive an email when it
ships. I have heard nothing from google so I called Google Fi support and was
told I would get an email from the shipping team letting my know when my phone
would ship but that was 2 days ago and have not heard a word from them. I
tried following there instructions to cancel the order but when you click the
edit order button where they say there is a cancel button none can be found.
Anyone else have similar experience? Before I placed my order I was thinking
the user experience from Google must be better then T-Mobile or Sprint but I
am starting to regret the choice.

~~~
format997
Sounds like your phone was so delayed because of a huge black friday promotion
they ran that put their pixel stock a month or more behind back orders. My
experience with them, outside of this one massive underestimate of how many
phones they would sell because of the phenomenal deal that they ran, has been
really good. Phones are normally in stock and ship almost immediately. And
customer service is very responsive.

~~~
format997
As a side note, the phone that I snagged during that promotion just barely
arrived a week ago. And I ordered it at the end of November. I think you just
ran into some unlucky timing, at least in regards to the delays in shipments
that you encountered.

------
annefauvre
I hate the idea that we're so beholden to one company's ethical compass over
another. It's so clear that we're in need for some sort of regulation to great
guideposts around what is ok and what is not... sigh... not like the
government will ever get its act together on this.

------
hcnews
Say what you want about Google, its one of the few companies with a moral
compass.

~~~
forgottenpass
Dragonfly.

~~~
izacus
Google employees risked their jobs to protest against Dragonfly.

~~~
x220
people with perhaps the highest demand for their labor than any other
professionals risked their cushy jobs to influence their company to not be
complicit in the censorship of over a billion people with a regime that has
committed genocide? that's superhuman dedication right there, good job Google
superheroes

~~~
kevinh
There are other tech companies doing related work in China. Are you saying
that the employees of those companies are all complicit with genocidal
actions?

~~~
x220
Assisting a regime (which has committed genocide) with censorship isn't the
same as assisting genocide. That should be clear from reading my comment.

------
microcolonel
As shrewd and cynical as this move is, it is good. With Google you at least
have some options for how much you want them to know about your location (even
if they rely on dark patterns still to trick average people into reenabling
it)

------
joobus
"... as soon as we heard about this practice, we required our network partners
to shut it down as soon as possible.” Google did not say when it made this a
requirement.

Hey, stop doing that, please?

------
wtmt
Pot, meet kettle. This is rich coming from Google, which doesn't respect
users' choices in Android not to collect location data and yet the company
wants others not to deal in that data from its other services. Perhaps it's
just the worry of enabling other companies to make money off of customer
information in any way possible, and wanting to be the only company that
should be able to make money from this data. As far as the user is concerned,
both are privacy violations and an expression of disrespect to them. The bar
on privacy is so low that Google seems to be imagining that its behavior is
"better than the others".

------
wpdev_63
I guess the attorney general is going to stay silent on this?

------
kerng
This seems more of a do not compete attempt.

------
forgottenpass
This isn't a win for consumers, it's just the changing boundaries of a turf
war.

Just like they made a big stink about getting everyone to HTTPS. It wasn't to
reduce 3rd party incidental access to your browsing data. It was to retain
their 3rd party incidental access while icing out ISPs.

------
kodablah
Let's translate PR speak here...

> "We have never sold Fi subscribers' location information,"

In other words "we never directly sold the info, but we never contracted them
not to do anything with subscribers' location information". In cases like
this, I'd say you are responsible for downstream data use. This isn't some API
or hole, this is a large b2b contract and Google should have contractually
obligated them to what they could do with their subscribers' data and then
sued when they found out it wasn't the case. Why didn't they? Either leverage
(Google has to rely on someone), ignorance (doubtful), or apathy (we don't
care until the media does). I'm inclined to guess #1 and #3.

> a Google spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement late on Thursday.

In other words, we had to ask and get a small statement because being open,
upfront, honest, etc is not their approach.

> "[...] as soon as we heard about this practice, we required our network
> partners to shut it down as soon as possible [...]"

In other words "we have asked, refuse to say whether they agreed, refuse to
say when it will happen, and in general are as opaque as those we are
deflecting towards".

Obviously the cell carriers are bad actors. But deflecting instead of
accepting responsibility is bad too. Just admit you have no leg to stand on
because you require them, or show us where, in writing, they promised to do
this and when. Can't do that? Yeah, because you're not in control and/or your
shitty business practices are all behind closed doors. And I don't limit this
to Google, this goes with anyone partnering with these companies (especially
the more traditionally reticent ones). Be open or get hate.

~~~
ucaetano
> In other words, we had to ask and get a small statement because being open,
> upfront, honest, etc is not their approach.

You don't seem to understand how the press works. When you write an article
about a company (or a public figure), you reach out to them for comment.

~~~
kodablah
Of course I understand. What I'm saying is that comment/information should be
available eagerly, by the company, upfront to all of their customers when they
found out about this problem without requiring a journalist.

