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Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

theguardian.com

61–70 of 201 posts

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#61
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a lie, it's describing the way they wrote their software. Yes, they could have written it to use only GPS, but it's not written that way.

It is written that way. If you dismiss that prompt it goes away and works just fine.

it doesnt work just fine because google uses a dark UI pattern.

the maps app will show that warning every damn time gps is enabled. every. single. time.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#62

> "The information fed back to Google includes barometric pressure readings so it can work out, for example, which level of a shopping mall you are on." I scoffed, but this is actually a thing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4431287/ (It's also useful for weather observations, see the old PressureNET.io site for an opt-in version.) Anyway, my monthly mobile data usage for Google services is 110 MB and t…

Are barometric sensors commonplace in smartphones?

Most flagship phones have them.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#63
I have two feelings about this. The first is, that if my data usefully supplies information to "the commons" which makes services like maps better for everyone including me, there is a zero-sum win-win here, and I'm ok.

The second is, that if there is some private leveraged advantage Google gets, over other people, which dis-equilibriates in the commons, This is not good, and I should be told quite clearly thats the case, and how it works.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#64
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is written that way. If you dismiss that prompt it goes away and works just fine.

it doesnt work just fine because google uses a dark UI pattern. the maps app will show that warning every damn time gps is enabled. every. single. time.

Yeah I meant it works fine for that session. It is just a misleading/lying user nag.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not certain why the downvotes; apart from community ROMs and Amazon's Android devices, Samsung has been positioning itself for some time to not be completely reliant on Google for it's phone business - they have an App Store of their own and their own duplicate functionality of many of Google's core services for Android. I wouldn't be surprised if they de-coupled from Google entirely at some point (yes, they'd need t…

I read the Samsung privacy policy, it's honestly not much better. Is there a project to replace all of play services with FOSS/encrypted ones?

There is, called MicroG. Although personally I don't use it on my google-less phone because it's a bit messy/early in development.

You can make do (as I do) with LineageOS, F-Droid, and APKMirror. The last is run by the AndroidPolice folks and is therefore trustworthy.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#66
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A known avenue of data acquisition is to wait until a wifi connections to transmit large amounts of data.

It is, however, the article states: > The experts, from computer and software corporation Oracle, claim Google is draining roughly one gigabyte of mobile data monthly from Android phone users’ accounts as it snoops in the background, collecting information to help advertisers. Then goes on to give a cost breakdown of how much this hypothetical data download is costing Australian's via their mobile data connections.

The article does state that, but there's zero evidence backing it. It also doesn't help that said experts are from Oracle, which aren't really the most unbiased source when it comes to Google news.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not certain why the downvotes; apart from community ROMs and Amazon's Android devices, Samsung has been positioning itself for some time to not be completely reliant on Google for it's phone business - they have an App Store of their own and their own duplicate functionality of many of Google's core services for Android. I wouldn't be surprised if they de-coupled from Google entirely at some point (yes, they'd need t…

I read the Samsung privacy policy, it's honestly not much better. Is there a project to replace all of play services with FOSS/encrypted ones?

True Samsung's not any better, but diversity is a good thing; if they have an alternative in place then they could much more easily provide competition with Google in this space (after all, Samsung sells hardware and doesn't really need to harvest your data)

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#69
post #56

Here's a the same story via the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/14/australia... A quote contained within both stories: > The software company Oracle revealed Google could be harvesting a gigabyte of data from Android devices each month Given that my data plan is 1.5 GB/month, I would notice if a gigabyte magically disappeared every month (it doesn't). Hopefully the ACCC has enough skepticism…

I'd assume that not all that information would require real-time feeding of data back to Google. So quite a lot I'd assume would be buffered and sent back while you're on a wifi connection.

The article states:

> The experts, from computer and software corporation Oracle, claim Google is draining roughly one gigabyte of mobile data monthly from Android phone users’ accounts as it snoops in the background, collecting information to help advertisers.

Then goes on to give a cost breakdown of how much this hypothetical data download is costing Australian's via their mobile data connections.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference? Both the hardware and the software are covered by hundreds of patents, copyright protections, license agreements, end user agreements, etc. The question here is what basic privacies can someone expect when they purchase a phone, and how transparent do companies need to be about what information they are collecting.

The difference is the essence of ownership. Google/Apple can't physically take away my phone, but they could declare a violation of the terms of service and terminate the software license agreement.

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