
Google tracks your movements, like it or not - tombrossman
https://apnews.com/f60bc112665b458cb6473d7ee9492932
======
jcfrei
What bothers me is that lots of applications will start throwing errors even
if you disable just one permission from Google Play Services (like body
sensors). Quite some time ago Google started encouraging developers to use the
google play permissions together with the respective android permission. This
doesn't mean that apps can collect your data even when you disable the
location permission (they still can't) but it forces you to either run google
play services (with all it's permissions on) and all its data collecting
abilities or basically run android without anything available from the play
store.

It's a really anti-competitive strategy by google, because it gives users the
ability to regulate permissions for single apps effectively (limiting the
ability of other companies to collect personal data) and on the other hands
strengthens googles own ability to collect all your data, making their
marketing platform even more valuable. It is high time regulators start
cracking down on this anti-competitive behavior when it comes to data
collection. Either give all companies the same chance to collect users data or
give users a real option to disable it for all applications (even the ones by
google).

~~~
devoply
> collect all your data, making their marketing platform even more valuable

I think the oily rags metaphor applies. They collect all your data but it's
not worth much individually. But yet they want all of it ignoring your needs
and rights for privacy.

------
pasta
What is driving me away from Google's Android is that they keep asking me to
turn stuff on I don't want to turn on.

I know that "when it's free I am the product" but the problem is that this is
not very obvious when you buy a device.

My $100,- Motorola Moto C plus is great but I can't remove the Google search
box from my home screen for example.

What would be great is that producers would tell how much I am the product
because Google sponsored X, Y and Z to make the phone cheaper. Then a consumer
can make the choice to buy a more expensive one or just accept that "you are
the product".

~~~
fredley
I was fed up with Google increasing insistence on pushing crap onto my home
screen. The unavoidable news feed was the last straw. I have now installed
Nova Launcher and it's made my phone great again. No Google crap on the home
screen at all.

~~~
jcalabro
I also highly recommend nova launcher. I've been using it for years and
honestly forgot that Google forces you to have a searchbar on the home screen.

~~~
pymai
is just second nature at this stage that nova launcher gets installed straight
away. export/import the settings and you're all set to go

------
alyandon
I disabled location permissions for everything I could after I discovered that
Google had removed the "report location in background" feature toggle for
applications. I discovered that it had been removed one day on a trip to
Walmart when Google Maps popped up asking me to take a picture of the
location.

I hadn't used Google Maps in weeks. :-/

My next phone will most likely be an iPhone since Google seems more and more
intent on outdoing Facebook in the e-stalking business.

~~~
gxs
This was me last year. After purchasing nothing but android phones, going back
to the t-mobile G1, I decided enough is enough and got an iphone.

Switched to the new Firefox - it's great. Feels like when I moved to chrome
the first time.

DDG is my default search engine. I still use the google bang over 80% of the
time, but hopefully that goes down over time and it's gotten me out of the
habit of thinking google right away.

With 60+ accounts, I've slowly started migrating to fastmail. It will probably
take a full year to do it slowly, but it will be worth it.

My last real reliance is on google maps, truly a superior product. That said,
I try to keep my use to longer trips between cities, including longer road
trips. I try to use Apple maps for smaller trips around town.

This isn't even necessarily all because of everything I think google does
wrong, rather it only makes sense to diversify a little.

So many people I know use google/chrome/maps/gmail/android/google
photos/google docs. Once I realized I was one of them it spooked me a little.

~~~
lakechfoma
I also switched my personal phone from ~8 years of android to the iPhone after
getting an iPhone 6s for work. What a wake up call.

> I still use the google bang over 80% of the time, but hopefully that goes
> down over time

I've been using DDG since ~2011 and have found myself using the google bang
more today than years ago. Maybe my searches today are harder for DDG? For
sure though, DDG has changed. It used to respect weirder search terms much
more than Google which made it more appealing to me as a programmer, but now
it over zealously corrects keywords, and completely common keywords get left
out. Doesn't seem to care as much about keyword order/distance in the results
either. It's like they amped the fuzziness beyond what is helpful. I'm
proactively quoting half of my search terms today.

> google maps, truly a superior product

I tried a few times to switch to Apple maps over the last 3 years and each
time was disappointed. But about a month ago I tried again and have decided
that they are really neck and neck. I don't know if it got better but my
partner uses Google still and we compare options and sometimes Apple finds
something better sometimes Google does but for the most part they get the same
results. Some traffic data exists, including construction/accidents (I have no
idea how). You lose streetview and I think the dependence on Yelp is annoying
but makes sense. After using it consistently for a month I find the UI/UX is
actually a lot better too. It has quirks but so does Google Maps. All that
said, it's only getting better and the network effect will help! Give it
another try!

~~~
forapurpose
> I've been using DDG since ~2011 and have found myself using the google bang
> more today than years ago.

See:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763031)

~~~
lakechfoma
Ehhhh... I don't know if it's the marketing doing its job or what but sifting
through DDG and startpage meta pages I just get a better feeling from DDG.
It's a little more modern, seems a little more transparent, I like the total
break from Google, I like that DDG has other projects and a living community
behind it. Frankly even the name DDG, while kind of dorky, is a lot easier to
sell friends/family on than some generic term. Somehow I just don't trust
them?

If I had to guess why startpage hasn't felt the ban-hammer yet, I would say it
simply isn't big enough for Google to care.

That was a lot of hand waving.

Anyway, I will continue to use !g over !s because personally I'm not _that_
paranoid (yet?) and between 1) not being signed into Google, 2) uBlock/privacy
badger/decentraleyes I'm not at all concerned about them doing a good job of
tracking me. My trust for Google is still greater than startpage.

------
JorgeGT
They seem to do a similar thing with Youtube. I have both _Youtube watch
history_ and _Youtube search history_ off. The other day I watched a very
amazing video about iron smelting in Africa. Now, each time a open a Youtube
link, that _specific_ iron smelting video appears as "recommended for me". So,
it is obvious that Google remembers which videos I have watched and openly
advertises them again to me.

By the way, the video itself is super interesting:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ)

~~~
brianpan
> By the way, the video itself is super interesting:
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ)

Covering up your tracks, eh? Ok, we'll play along. Everybody click on the link
provided by Jorge "Totally not into iron smelting more than anyone else" GT.

------
throwaway6789
I watch YouTube a lot. I have pfSense with lists for blocking Google as well
as a Samsung phone with Disconnect (that supposedly blocks all tracking). When
I watch YouTube, I usually gets only ads about visiting some place or some
photography related ad. Then one day, I got an ad for a divorce attorney. I
freaked out because the first thought I came to mind was the Target (?) story
where the girl's dad found out she is pregnant because they send pregnancy
related ads to her house. Did Google's algorithm figure out I am going to get
divorced?

I am from India, working in US. My wife recently went back to India. Plan was
I will go back after 4-5 months. But she and her parents were worried that I
would change my mind. I am worried that she may leave me if I don't. One or
two days after I saw the ad, I dismissed my fears of about to be divorced as
my paranoia.

I have 2 YouTube accounts, the main one and another one that I use for
watching porn (I like YouTube porn than those in porn sites). I never used
this second account outside a VirtualBox VM. I always restore the VM to a
known state every time I use this account. I have seen that sometimes I get
recommendations related to the videos I watch in this porn account when I go
to YouTube from my regular Windows without even logged in. I thought may be
Google is showing it based on my IP address.

4-5 days after the divorce ad, when I was speaking to my wife, she mentioned
about one of her friends who divorced her husband because he didn't love her
or something. I immediately felt she is indirectly warning me.

7-8 days after the divorce ad, when I checked YouTube from my regular OS
without logged in, there was a recommendation video similar to the kind I
watch on my VM porn account.

One possibility immediately occurred to me. What if my wife searched for
divorce related stuff from India and Google's algorithm decided to show that
ad thinking she is still in US? I don't know.

~~~
have_faith
> I like YouTube porn than those in porn sites

What do you consider YouTube porn? just asking for a friend

------
macintux
The article appears to describe only Google’s controls over your account,
ignoring the iOS restrictions that allow iPhone and iPad users to prevent
Google from seeing the data in the first place.

Unfortunate that they don’t make that clear.

~~~
repolfx
Android enforces permissions on Google apps too. I don't think that's what
this is about.

Rather, the AP is interpreting location history as a feature that controls all
use of geographical location for any purpose across all products. But what it
actually refers to is a specific product called literally Location History
which lets you see where you've been on a timeline and map.

The article does admit half way down that Google says this clearly in popups
that appear when you toggle these settings on and off. So the "story" here is,
if you want to call it a story, that some AP journalist and a couple of
academics believe these warnings are not worded clearly enough. They may well
have a point but I'm not sure this rises to the level of news.

It'd also be very hard to really eliminate _all_ use of location across all
products. Even very basic queries like [buy flowers] needs some rough idea of
the user's location to give results that aren't nonsense. Even just opening
Google Maps has to request the tiles for your current location, and as those
tiles are customised to your prior usage of maps, who you are has to be sent
along with the tile query. How do you implement that without Google knowing
your rough location? The provider knowing this is rather inherent to the whole
concept of digital maps to begin with.

So I can't imagine Google offering the sort of setting the AP wants.

~~~
babuskov
> It'd also be very hard to really eliminate _all_ use of location across all
> products.

I'm sure Google has great programmers.

> Even very basic queries like [buy flowers] needs some rough idea of the
> user's location to give results that aren't nonsense.

No, they don't. Back in the days when no tracking was done, I could buy
flowers without any problems using [buy flowers location] query myself. Hell,
I often use it today, because I'm not at the location anyway and am looking
for such things in advance.

Having location data is nice improvement, but it isn't a necessity.

> Even just opening Google Maps has to request the tiles for your current
> location

It doesn't. I can show me the world map initially until I type in what I want
to see. I use it like this all the time and it works great.

> How do you implement that without Google knowing your rough location?

Let the user type in their address. It's inconvenient, but if people value
their privacy more than convenience, let them.

~~~
repolfx
You aren't disagreeing with me. Adding a location manually to a query makes it
a different query, but I specifically stated one that doesn't have a location
(and yes obviously users make such queries all the time!).

But yes, to your wider point, you can progressively delete all location
sensitivity from every product and make them annoying and hard to use in the
process. And even that wouldn't work. It's a fair bet that if you search for
something with a location in the query, whether it be on web search or maps,
that this is where you actually are.

The reality is nobody cares about this type of privacy feature, especially
because Google can't avoid knowing at least your IP address. The AP only cares
because it's gone digging for an attack story.

~~~
babuskov
> Google can't avoid knowing at least your IP address.

Knowing it isn't the problem. It's in storing it permanently. When I need
location-enabled services I enable location tracking on my hardware (GPS+wifi)
and everything just works. Google doesn't need to keep a history of all my
locations ever for their services to work properly.

------
MarkMc
Wait, the article title says that "Google tracks your movements, like it or
not".

But if I don't like it I can turn off both "Location History" and "Web and App
Activity", right?

~~~
pandler
The whole point of the article is that it’s still tracked even if you turn it
off.

------
chrismartin
For those of you wishing for a lower-surveillance experience on Android:
please try LineageOS (AOSP) without any of the Google apps or Play Services.
Instead, get your apps from F-Droid and Yalp Store. Firefox with NoScript
plugin, AdAway, Syncthing, etc. This has been my daily driver for years.
Google Maps works well enough in a browser -- I use it as a 'homescreen-
installed' web app. Google sees my location only when I am actually using
Maps.

I'm missing out on a few slick features in the Google native apps (mostly in
Maps), but I'll gladly trade that for a device that is not trying to erode my
privacy at every possible opportunity.

~~~
hodorhodor
What are you doing about the missing GCM/FCM? Especially with messaging apps
it's super annoying when they only receive updates when you actually open
them.

~~~
chrismartin
Sorry for the late response: email (K-9 Mail) uses IMAP idle, Signal uses a
persistent websocket, and XMPP (Conversations) also uses long-lived TCP
connections. I don't use any proprietary messaging apps that rely on Google's
push notifications.

------
ivan_ah
Link to the "Web & App Activity" control panel:
[https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols/search?pli=1](https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols/search?pli=1)

~~~
pacala
The article claims otherwise.

> Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you’ve
> been. Google’s support page on the subject states: “You can turn off
> Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go
> are no longer stored.”

> That isn’t true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps
> automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.

> For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open
> its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint
> roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with
> location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint
> your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot — and save
> it to your Google account.

~~~
HillaryBriss
> accurate to the square foot

Not sure where they're getting this. Which android phones are recording
location with that level of accuracy?

My understanding is that, even with the latest Round Trip Time accuracy
improvements accessible with Android Pie and 802.11mc WiFi, the best case
scenario is one-meter accuracy:

"RTT measures the round-trip time between two Wi-Fi devices so both your
mobile phone and your access points need to support the 802.11mc protocol. As
you saw, RTT can give you very fine location estimates down to one-meter
accuracy"

[http://gpsworld.com/how-to-achieve-1-meter-accuracy-in-
andro...](http://gpsworld.com/how-to-achieve-1-meter-accuracy-in-android/)

------
Anthony-G
I keep all location services turned off on my Android device – unless I have a
good use case, e.g., I’m in a strange town/city and I need to know where I am
on the map. So, I figured I should be safe from the privacy violation(s)
described in this article. Then I got to the section that reported about the
tracking of Android users by “collecting the addresses of nearby cellphone
towers”. :( Even though “Google changed the practice and insisted it never
recorded the data anyway”, it appears that just carrying any Android device
comes with the cost of ongoing background location tracking.

I’ve long accepted that carrying any kind of mobile phones allows mobile
operators and state actors to track one’s location – but it seems to be a
constant battle for citizens to understand how they might minimise the scope
and quantity of personal data being harvested by large tech companies. I don’t
know enough about the letter of the law but this kind of surreptitious
location monitoring (via mis-leading options when _Location History_ is turned
off) seems to violate the spirit of the GDPR.

~~~
Ajedi32
Pretty sure determining your location via the signal strength of nearby cell
towers is a feature of Location Services, so if you have that turned off
you're fine.

------
adrianmonk
> For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open
> its Maps app.

Except in the case of using entirely offline map data, I don't know how the
user can expect their location not to be revealed to the server in this case.
To see the map, you have to have map data, and which data you pull is going to
give a very strong hint of your location.

I guess you can distinguish between _a_ location (that you viewed) and _your_
location (that you definitely are at), but it's still an extremely strong hint
that after a period of inactivity, the first location you load is probably the
location where you are.

~~~
vesinisa
> To see the map, you have to have map data, and which data you pull is going
> to give a very strong hint of your location.

You are missing the point. While the location for which you fetch map data
essentially reveals your current location, the request can be fulfilled
without making a permanent record connecting that location to your Google
account. The issue here is that when people turn off "Location History" in
their privacy settings, they except Google not to store the location
information to their Google account. But Google seems to be doing it anyway,
unless you also disable "Web & App Activity".

~~~
adrianmonk
Oh, I see. The article mentions
[https://myactivity.google.com/](https://myactivity.google.com/) but for some
reason it didn't make it a hyperlink like it did with several other things. So
I managed to not notice it.

------
neverminder
Well, Captain Obvious moment here. I personally am balls deep into Google's
ecosystem (for obvious reasons) just like the next guy, but I never doubted
they track everything, in fact I always assumed that. I don't disable location
tracking, it's too convenient.

I do have a pretty good idea what I would do to disappear from Google's radar
if/when I needed - a "clean" phone that connects to internet via VPN, I would
check my gmail in browser. Third party maps/navigation app and few other
essential apps, none affiliated with Google. Not as convenient, but functional
enough.

------
0xmohit
Not at all surprising.

They were earlier found stealth downloading audio listeners on computers
running Chrome that transmitted audio data back to Google.

Source: Google Chrome Listening In To Your Room Shows The Importance Of
Privacy Defense In Depth

[https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-
ch...](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-chrome-
listening-in-to-your-room-shows-the-importance-of-privacy-defense-in-depth/)

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
Your source indicates it's part of Google's OK Google feature, which AFAIK is
opt-out on Android as well. The headline makes it seem a little more overblown
than it is.

~~~
trendia
Google's "opt-out" features are so difficult to uniformly turn off. The
article points out that Google still tracks location data _when you turn
location tracking off_ because there is some other option in a different
screen that you also need to turn off.

Further, most people never even know to opt-out of these tracking options in
the first place, because they don't know that Google is collecting voice data.

------
anotherNae
Google Play Services is probably the most intrusive app on the phone and good
luck if you disable it. This one time I tried disabling most of the Google
apps on my phone (Android 7.1.2) including Chrome and I did not have a WebView
implementation remaining. Most apps started crashing until I re-enabled
Chrome.

I have all Google apps disabled except Google Play Services but that too does
not have any permissions granted (thanks stock Nougat). It keeps bugging me
every now and then to enable permissions.

By the way, for people who would want to relieve themselves of Google Play
Store, I use an alternate App Store
[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstor...](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstore/)
Sure automatic updates are a hassle, but I don't have a lot of apps so things
are alright. Plus, it lets me download previous versions of apps without
digging up the whole internet. I am using an old imgur app that allows
browsing without sign up. :)

I still hate the ever present search bar on the home screen even after
disabling the Google App. Will try Nova Launcher soon.

------
throw2016
This constant abuse of language to play duplicitous games with users is
unethical and betrays crass opportunism. This is not a business, it is 'growth
hacking' to a tyranny.

Posturing about evil while doing exactly that is vulgar. Google's language and
design has been persistently deceptive. If you think users are 'idiots' as
many software folks so derogatorily claim why go through such lengths to
deceive them?

Another self serving myth to perpetuate denial and make the surveillance
industry feel ok about being sellouts. Android is designed to leak data like a
sieve. The very notion of privacy or security with the OS vendor and ecosystem
obsessed with surveillance and collecting user data is fantastic.

Google would not be where there are had they been transparent in their
communication. Users would be far more circumspect and as they learn the
extent of surveillance utter disgust will quickly follow. This is just another
type of corruption and fraud.

------
schmichael
Location History is my biggest pet peeve with Google and nearly got me to
switch to iPhone. After getting a super creepy "Here's Where You've Been in
the last Week!" email that (a) wasn't accurate and (b) I never opted into, I
disabled Location History.

However, the number of things this breaks is frustrating: Google Fit requiring
it makes some sense, but most of my Google Home features refuse to work
without Location History on. It's incredibly frustrating when a physical
device is artificially limited for reasons beyond a consumer's comprehension.

------
remir
With the amount of data Google has and the predictability of human behaviour,
I would not be surprised if there's some hiden program inside Google with the
aim to predict future events before they happen.

------
jevgeni
Remember when Microsoft used very basic telemetry in Windows 10 and everybody
on HN lost their shit as if it's the privacy armageddon?

Google: (very intrasparently tracks your location history, even when settings
are off)

HN: Yeah, nah, it's chill dude. Can't be that bad.

~~~
bitL
It's different when a phone-level tracking suddenly appears on your desktop.
No privacy-minded person was using Android before, but they used Windows. Now
they don't.

~~~
close04
This just proves how little understanding and tech education most users have
(still doesn't stop them from having strong opinions on this though).

Android data collection which has been happening for close to a decade is
orders of magnitude more intrusive than what Microsoft does with basic
telemetry.

Yet most people see MS as bad and embrace Google for being "ethical". A
classic case of "guess what".

~~~
jchw
Microsoft added a bunch of hooks to get your location and track offline
searches without adding almost any usefulness. Privacy advocates definitely
hate Google's location tracking, but Google made it into a feature with the
location timeline. Does Microsoft even let me see what searches or locations
I've shared with them?

~~~
golf1052
Yeah, Microsoft created a dashboard last year that let's you view all the
privacy info they have on you [https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/10/microsoft-
privacy-dashbo...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/10/microsoft-privacy-
dashboard/)

~~~
jchw
Oh, that's pretty cool. I want to try this when I get home.

I think it would help me sleep easier with my Windows installs, though I don't
know if any of them are logged into Microsoft accounts anymore.

------
amelius
I wonder if Google has an organizational structure where groups of people work
on "dark" projects, that the other groups shouldn't know about. And the
uninformed groups get these strange specifications that they need to fulfill
but shouldn't ask about.

~~~
skybrian
It's unclear from the article what they're talking about, but that's usually
not how it works. More likely, some other teams are not writing code to check
if Location History is on. Or they decided it doesn't matter for _reasons_.

Making sure rules are consistently followed in a large organization takes a
company-wide effort. It doesn't happen by default.

------
econ4all
This not very different from when the Wall Street Journal published a story a
few weeks back about how: "GOOGLE IS LETTING PEOPLE READ YOUR EMAILS (provided
you've given them the permission to do so)".

It would seem that news organizations are trying to entangle google in a
cambridge analytica type of controversy, maybe thinking about the potential
traffic going their way or maybe they just don't like it that the bulk of ad
spending is going to Google/FB, or probably they just think it's worth
publishing.

The reality is that the conflict of interest is hard to ignore and the
publishing industry should consider adding disclaimers when reporting on their
business rivals.

~~~
frabcus
Google's a monopoly in multiple areas by any reasonable definition.

So yes, I hope they are being entangled in a Cambridge Analytica type scandal.
It is the job of the press to do so.

Personally, I think the YouTube recommendation algorithm is a huge problem.
Once everyone understands it, that will be the relevant scandal.

How YouTube's recommendation algorithm makes everyone more extreme, in all
directions: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-
po...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-
radical.html)

How YouTube's recommendation algorithm causes creation of appalling content
targeted at children:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w)

It is harming our society in deep and scary ways.

~~~
econ4all
You obviously dislike them and is willfully conflating a bunch of stuff but
it's definitely not "the job of the press" to manufacture scandals.

~~~
arminiusreturns
The job they are supposed to do and the one they actually do are two different
things.

------
aarestad
[https://myaccount.google.com/privacy](https://myaccount.google.com/privacy)
is the place to go to double-check your own settings.

------
bprasanna
Google will say it is for better user experience, but we users know its a
privacy breach. The same thing happened to me many times, without GPS switched
on, without location history enabled, many times Google maps used to ask me to
write a review about a place which i visited recently. Recently Google Drive
asked for permission of using Wifi information. Why to ask permission just
abuse it internally.

------
Mary-Jane
It's funny that when corporations track users to provide customers with
content they find useful, people are up in arms about privacy violations; but
when governments set up 24 hour city or nation-wide video surveillance, people
are much more receptive. Given the relative risks involved (companies want to
make it easier for you to buy stuff; governments can send you to prison) one
would think it should be the other way around.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
While I'm also not fond of the government side of surveillance, I think there
is one major difference here for many people. And that is artificial creation
of demand. Effective advertising can manipulate your wants and desires to
convince you to desire things you really have no need or want of. And they go
through every possible method to try to achieve this, including psychological
manipulation. The reason I'm not fond of advertising is because I'm not
arrogant enough to believe I'm immune to it. Collect enough data on me and you
can probably create campaigns that would artificially push my interests
towards things I would otherwise have 0 interest in.

When the government collects data on you the fundamental reason is to protect
and grow itself, not to try to empty your wallet. Some of these data may end
up getting, let's say, "leaked" and used for more self serving purposes by
individual politicians or political parties, but that's at least a technically
illegitimate use of the data, whereas such self-serving exploitative functions
by corporations are the primary use of the data.

~~~
skybrian
I wonder what really counts as manipulation?

Maybe you walk by an ice cream store and you think "I should get some ice
cream". If the ice cream store wasn't there, you wouldn't have thought that.
I'm sure someone could talk this up as "convincing you to want things that you
otherwise wouldn't have wanted."

Maybe this is more of a problem for some people and a liquor store? But the
advertising can just be: the store is there.

So much of advertising is attempting to remind people to think of things they
already like, even when it's not physically present. It's a much easier sell
than getting someone to try something new.

I can just mention Twitter and some people will think about checking to see
what's new on Twitter.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I only used manipulation in reference to psychology. And there I meant it
quite literally. Most recently an internal memo at Facebook indicated
something literally described as a "psychological trick" to get teen users to
use the platform. It relied on actively micro-targeting and misleading teens.
Real classy stuff.

The word I used for general market targeting was exploitation. And no, in
general the mere presence of stores is not exploiting individuals. However, if
I see there is a large alcoholics anonymous group at a location and decide to
build a liquor store right there because of that, this would certainly be
exploiting individuals. But we need not just stick with moral platitudes. The
issue is not the morality, in my opinion, but the active targeting of
individuals.

Want to advertise deals on nails beside a hammer display? Sure, makes sense.
Want to try to turn as large of swaths of the internet as possible into data
collection nodes to try to siphon off each and every detail of individuals,
trade these details among companies to build even greater profile collections,
and then micro-target as finely as possible while appealing to everything you
know your profile indicates drives this individual's decisions? I consider
this exploitative. I'd say everything is then a sliding scale in between, but
we're already far enough to the extreme end that it's not especially far off
to assign many of the major American tech companies to what should be the
hyperbolic extreme end of that scale.

\-------

EDIT: Coincidentally enough, somebody just shared this [1] link. It's
extremely related to this very line of discussion. Though again it relies on
moral platitudes in that targeting children is somehow the heinous act. No,
that may be particularly heinous but the fundamental problem is the way they
actively target everybody. This is a quite demented industry we've created.

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17750959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17750959)

~~~
skybrian
Another thing that might make definitions tricky: knowing your customers'
desires and catering to their individual preferences is an important part of
providing good service. Or at least it is when a person does it. Although,
people can certainly be manipulative too.

Maybe one of the issues is that some forms of personalizations are hidden? A
billboard is obvious to everyone. When an ad is seen by people who are _not_
its target, this raises awareness of what's going on.

------
marssaxman
It has always seemed likely to me that Google tracks more information than one
might immediately suspect, so I try not to do anything which might make it
convenient for them. With reference to location, I leave GPS turned off
essentially all the time, and I never enter any Google account credentials
into an Android phone. I don't know how much it helps, but it can't hurt.

------
spacenick88
I guess I'm the only one here who actively turns Location History on. That way
I do get the benefits like being able to exactly pin-point when I was where
and I can make sure the data Google believes isn't wrong. Then if I don't want
to be tracked I can just leave my phone at home and everything will look
absolutely normal and no one is any wiser.

------
diggan
Slightly unrelated but something amazing and terrifying happened two days ago.
I moved about 6 months ago and I keep a separate OS (Windows) for mainly
gaming.

When I was waiting for some updates to finish, I was browsing HN and came
across a Show HN that shows you food places etc
([https://www.justgetmefood.com/](https://www.justgetmefood.com/) \-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17746497](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17746497)).
Since I was on my gaming OS, I was not logged in to Google or any of my
accounts, only Steam and some other non-important things.

I tried out the app, and it promptly showed me restaurants that were 20
minutes of walking distance, from my old place! Down to the street-number.
Even though I never gave away the address on that operating system (also
installed after the move actually). Somewhere along the pipes, Google picked
up that this was me (IP probably?) but somehow mapped me to the old address.

~~~
jquast
How about your wireless access point, did it move with you, and remain the
same, possibly unique, "wifi name"?

~~~
diggan
Hm, good thought but no. New ISP, new modem and new router. None of the
existing network gear was moved together with me. However, the wifi name was
reused to be the same. But, the computer I'm on doesn't have any wifi so it
wouldn't be able to know.

------
singularity2001

       «Google’s support page on the subject states: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”

That isn’t true.…»

Can Google be sued for … lying?

------
oinkgrr
Also mentioned here:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45183041](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45183041)

------
alphabettsy
I wish they had an alternate business model where you could pay to opt out of
data collection on all their services, but until then I just don’t use them
anytime I don’t need to.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
In thinking about this there is some interesting irony in that the people that
would pay to opt out are probably the last people Google would ever want to do
this, as those are extremely high value accounts willing to pay for even
relatively trivial digital services or 'features' as we might call this.

------
crunchlibrarian
We're going to need a small army of lawyers who understand code and can
subpoena repositories and databases to get out of this horrible dystopic
nightmare.

------
oh_sigh
This really sounds like certain (google employed) app developers aren't aware
that they have to abide by certain setting values?

------
sonofblah
Wish there were a viable alternative to the duopoly--for now, Apple remains
the lesser evil.

------
bitL
Buying that Sailfish phone was a prescient move in retrospect...

------
ttoinou
What part of Android is not FLOSS that makes harder for us to look into the
code and guess where there's spying ?

Is there competition in Android distribution with all the features needed by
most people (replacing GGL Maps with OpenStreetMaps etc.) ?

~~~
binomialxenon
On a typical OEM Android device, there's likely more non-free software than
free. Due to Android's permissive license, any OEM can change any part of the
OS for each device and not publish the source code. On a Lineage or AOSP
install, the only significant non-free part are hardware drivers and some
library components such as RAR. While this isn't ideal, I doubt Google is
spying through them. Using a Android phone without Google (using F-Droid, and
OpenStreetMaps) is definitely doable but I don't think most non-geeks would
even consider it. I used one for about a year and a half, until I went no-
smartphone.

I think Eelo is trying to make a "user-friendly" distro, but it just looks
like a coat of paint on top of Lineage+microG, I don't think there's much new
to it.

------
Lendal
Am I the only person in the world that uses Timeline?

I don't use Google's search but I do use Timeline frequently and find it
useful enough that it's worth the risk. So I understand the difference between
these different privacy settings, which AP is calling "an issue". It's not an
"issue". People are freaking out like frightened mice and making it into
something it's not. Fear is the motivator here, not facts.

The ability to feed the Timeline app with location data is a separate thing
from turning off all other apps' ability to use location data.

Why is this so difficult for people to understand? I know the answer. Viral
fear shuts off your brains' ability to think. I answered my own question.

~~~
amaccuish
This is a typical engineer comment, completly removed from Joe user.

------
MrEfficiency
Everyone remembers decades ago, the fear of having a first/last name online.

That turned out to be significantly less dangerous than we anticipated.

What if our movements are similar? Everyone knows where you work and where
your home.

Whatever the case, the next few years will decide if we value privacy or
endless features.

~~~
onion2k
_That turned out to be significantly less dangerous than we anticipated._

...where "we" is limited to people in Western democracies with governments
that don't oppress their citizens. People in countries that have less
enlightened governments have often had a pretty bad time after posting things
online in ways that security services have been able to monitor, track, and
use as the basis for imprisonment and worse.

I don't believe that Google is passing data about people to oppressive
regimes, but there are damn good reasons why people think privacy is important
for _all_ internet users.

~~~
jmisavage
The fact Google is making a search engine specific to China to meet their
requirements for censorship opens the door for that very specific thing. First
it's hiding results that the government doesn't want seen. Next it will be
reporting who's looking for censored topics. It's a slippery slope.

