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Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

theguardian.com

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Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#131

Post by code_duck »

bb88 wrote: post #101
code_duck wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t have to send back all of the raw data, just analyses like ‘person X’s face detected, is in a noisy place’ or ‘conversation included these 5 keywords’. The processing and data transfer could also be deferred until the phone is idle or on WiFi.

> They don’t have to send back all of the raw data, just analyses like ‘person X’s face detected, is in a noisy place’ or ‘conversation included these 5 keywords’. Not without making a noticeable drain on the user's battery.

When you fire up an app like Instagram, it does many things that create various drains on the battery. It opens the camera repeatedly when I don’t intend to use it, for instance. When you click stories, it opens the camera, often facing you. Who’s to say it doesn’t send that pic or some analysis of it to FB? I don’t think that would use any significantly higher battery or network anything especially since the processing and data transfer could be deferred.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#132

Post by stochastic_monk »

unpopular42 wrote: post #122
stochastic_monk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France and Germany are looking pretty good these days.

Oh yeah, you might get mugged and killed if you go to a wrong area of Paris at night, or your wife may get raped in Germany and the police will cover it up because immigrants can't be touched. But you'll be safe from the evil Google, so you've got that going for you which is nice.

My family never had problems in Paris, and they lived there quite happily for four years. I even did an internship at UParis-Sud. It’s a wonderful place in my experience.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#133

Post by code_duck »

_ptgt wrote: post #100
code_duck wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t have to send back all of the raw data, just analyses like ‘person X’s face detected, is in a noisy place’ or ‘conversation included these 5 keywords’. The processing and data transfer could also be deferred until the phone is idle or on WiFi.

It's just as farfetched to think they're doing constant image/voice recognition with your phone's processor without you knowing. Those models are big and take a lot of computing power

It doesn’t need to be constant or continual. I don’t talk continually near my phone, for one.

Siri and other voice rec is able to get words from my audio without appearing to affect my phone function or slow it down. There are plenty of times my phone is idle that it could be doing that.

Same with photos. When you give many apps access to your photos, as we know, they will analyze and/or transit the metadata of all photos on the device. It’s not hard to imagine going farther than that, and as noted, processing or data transfer could be deferred.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#134

Post by letsgetphysITal »

askvictor wrote: post #39

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 read "they" in the phrase "... but they are also reportedly paying their telco providers to send the data." to mean Google were paying, so it wouldn't appear in the metered usage for which the end user is billed. This makes sense, as it seems the data apparently can be transferred when "... they do not have a Sim card or apps installed."

What would bother me, though, is if they were purposefully not exposing that data transfer in the data metering on the device. That seems shady.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#135

Post by dang »

askvictor wrote: post #120
dang wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the submitted story ( https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/technology/smartphones/acc... ) has an autoplay video, we might as well switch to the other one. (I'm assuming they're roughly equally informative.) Thanks!

Actually I thought the originally submitted article had a more informative title: "ACCC investigating Oracle research showing Google users Android phone plan data to spy." The article content is approximately equivalent; though of low value in both cases

You're right, that's not so bad. IIRC I was referring to that use of 'spy'. But will edit the accusation of clickbait out of my comment.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#136

Post by askvictor »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #132
unpopular42 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, you might get mugged and killed if you go to a wrong area of Paris at night, or your wife may get raped in Germany and the police will cover it up because immigrants can't be touched. But you'll be safe from the evil Google, so you've got that going for you which is nice.

My family never had problems in Paris, and they lived there quite happily for four years. I even did an internship at UParis-Sud. It’s a wonderful place in my experience.

Don't feed the trolls

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#137

Post by voltagex_ »

lysp wrote: post #56
askvictor wrote: post #39

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.

On many, many Australian ADSL connections you'd notice anything sending that amount per month purely because how slow the connection would become.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#138

Post by titzer »

ehsankia wrote: post #73
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be another situation where GDPR saves the day; Google will need to push updates out to limit their data collection, as well as reveal the full scope of their data collection activities with Android.

Except that Timeline in Google maps has been GDPR compliant for a long long time. 1. You can opt out 2. You can see all your data 3. You can export all your data 4. You can delete all your data Also, they have very little evidence for their claims that it's actually using that much data. From my experience, Google only syncs on wifi and rarely wastes your mobile data.

It isn't Google Maps that is collecting this data, it's Google Play Services, which is a service layer at the bottom that underlies all location information on the device.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#139

Post by xbmcuser »

8note wrote: post #116
chris_wot wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Oracle. You must ask yourself, what's in it for them? And is it actually true?

It's Google. you must ask yourself, what aren't they collecting?

It's Google they are very good at data analysis them needing to use 1gb of data to know about you are doing on your phone is an idiotic assumption. They could probably do it 5 mb only. My bet is they are counting Google photo uploads to get the 1 gb figure.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#140

Post by [deleted] »

askvictor wrote: post #39

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…

[deleted]
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