Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 201 posts

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#151

Post by mdekkers »

I'm really sick of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and every other company that uses lies, deceit, ambiguity and general dark patterns to coerce me into parting with the ownership of my systems.

Google must be laughing their asses off with all the Facebook scrutiny - I am pretty sure that the profile FB has on users and non-users alike is but a vague precis when compared with the profile Google has on all of us.

Microsoft has now started claiming that "Windows is a service" and they can fuck right off. I have lost count on the amount of times my machine rebooted in the middle of the night, despite implementing hack after hack to stop this disgusting behaviour.

I paid for my hardware, and I paid for my software - none of these bastards get to decide what part of my data they get to siphon off.

They are all at it, like pigs on the trough. I bought a OnePlus 2 years ago, due to the promise that it is lightweight, has no crap pre-installed like an unremovable facebook, or whatever else these fuckers come up with next. Turns out OnePlus is just as happy grabbing your data and silently siphoning this off to some hidden database.

I have a new PC on the way, which will be the first time in about 10 years that I'll be going back to a Linux desktop as my main daily driver. My phone is next, I'm looking for a nice feature phone that doesn't send my private information back to these fuckers.

Stallman was right.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#152

Post by cromwellian »

phs318u wrote: post #106
ggm wrote: post #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…

> if my data usefully supplies information to "the commons" This could be achieved using an approach like differential privacy[0] which Apple use. [0] https://images.apple.com/privacy/docs/Differential_Privacy_O...

Google also uses Differential Privacy, in fact, Chrome was the first consumer app to ship with differential privacy (RAPPOR: https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub42852).

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#153

Post by dx034 »

viraptor wrote: post #107
ehsankia wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not what the article is claiming. They are saying Google is using 1GB worth of data, though with very little evidence to backup their claim.

It could mean data transfer, but it also could mean other things. They write: > could be harvesting a gigabyte of data from devices each month Which is unlikely to be true in the literal sense of pure bytes transferred simply because: a) people would notice that very soon, b) people consume gigabytes but don't produce nearly as much - all of my monthly activity would likely fit in a few MB, c) processing that much is…

I think data transfer is a big issue. Even at Google's scale, 10 petabytes a month (10 million android users) probably creates more costs than it's worth for them. It's much easier to compress data on the device and only send new information, with that you can easily get a month of location history <10mb even for people who move a lot.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#154

Post by dx034 »

askvictor wrote: post #124
askl56 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rupert Murdoch does not own the Guardian. That is laughable. It's owned by The Scott Trust Limited, which was formerly a charitable trust and is dedicated to keeping the Guardian's editorial independence.

The original posted news story was by a Murdoch-owned newspaper; has since been changed to the Guardian (possibly while OP was writing this equation?). So the equation kind of holds, just drop the Guardian but.

Of course Oracle published this to damage Google, that's obvious. But that doesn't mean the claims are untrue. It's likely that there's something to it, even if the amount of data is incorrect.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#155

Post by dx034 »

jdietrich wrote: post #147
la_oveja wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In EU they're still tracking you, for now. Every time I get near a McDonalds it asks me to take a photo of it.

That's because you've got location services turned on. There is an opt-out, but it does break Google Assistant.

I turned all assistant features off (search obviously still works) and only location on for apps. Location history and sharing are also off but I'm not sure if they still save some location information. I'll wait for the 25th May and then download data (I'm in the EU) to see what they have..

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#156

Post by dx034 »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #91
askvictor wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your realistic options are to move the EU or to stop using Google. Maybe one day they'll offer a subscription based fee for it's services, but for now you pay with your data.

France and Germany are looking pretty good these days.

Most EU countries do. Southern Europe can also be very nice and better suited if you don't like rain (although southern France works for that as well). Apart from the language barrier, moving within the EU isn't much more difficult than moving between states in the US.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#157

Post by dx034 »

iopuy wrote: post #45
flashman wrote: post #33

> "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…

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

My Android phone shows me data usage on wifi as well and I don't see these spikes.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#158

Post by raihansaputra »

dx034 wrote: post #155
jdietrich wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because you've got location services turned on. There is an opt-out, but it does break Google Assistant.

I turned all assistant features off (search obviously still works) and only location on for apps. Location history and sharing are also off but I'm not sure if they still save some location information. I'll wait for the 25th May and then download data (I'm in the EU) to see what they have..

You now can download what's currently available through Google's Takeout. Maybe once GDPR is in effect more stuff can be available, but I'm not sure what those will be.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#159

Post by gaius »

askvictor wrote: post #79
brylie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really like to explicitly tell Google to stop tracking my location. Period. Despite what might be in their terms of service,this tracking is a violation of privacy. I have never given informed consent to such locstion tracking, and still get prompts to 'rate this location' despite having explicitly disabled location history. Google location tracking is increasingly unethical.

I think your realistic options are to move the EU or to stop using Google. Maybe one day they'll offer a subscription based fee for it's services, but for now you pay with your data.

If Google or FB ever offered a paid option they would still track you. Why wouldn’t they?

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#160

Post by la_oveja »

jdietrich wrote: post #147
la_oveja wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In EU they're still tracking you, for now. Every time I get near a McDonalds it asks me to take a photo of it.

That's because you've got location services turned on. There is an opt-out, but it does break Google Assistant.

I have location history off, but obviously need location turned on for my apps to work. I only want to turn off Google (I even froze the Google Search app).
Post reply on HN