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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

#181

Post by mseebach »

oswald wrote: post #175
mseebach wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try making a controlled experiment. Humans are notoriously good at seeing patterns that aren't there.

Someone conducted a simple experiment to see if the facebook app was listening to their conversations. Spoiler: it's listening to your every word. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps

Yeah, that's not a controlled experiment. I can think of at least three benign explanations that is consistent with not listening.

The experiment, the real, controlled (replicable!) one, isn't hard to do. You just need a couple of spare phones.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#182

Post by jcfrei »

kelnos wrote: post #21
dingo_bat wrote: post #10

Android is the biggest example of how companies practice bait and switch under the banner of "open source". I's rather have fully proprietary software that respects my privacy than open source software that opens up my private data.

My guess here is that most of the tracking bits are implemented through the Google Play Services app/service, which is fully closed source. This isn't an open vs. closed thing... unless someone would want to make the point that this sort of tracking would be easier to find and verify if the software doing it actually was open source.

That's true as far as I know as well. I started removing permissions from the play service applications in Android. I've run into two issues afterwards: Some apps complain (but continue to work) and you can't install new apps from the play store (the store stops working without any warning or error). However I wonder how effective this is - does anybody have any insights to share?

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#183

Post by babapapa »

anonytrary wrote: post #58
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 used to be paranoid about companies using my microphone and camera to spy on me until I realized the data costs associated with the spying would be so great, that I'd notice. That single argument has ended my paranoia on the matter. I hope others can be at ease. That said, I still put tape on my laptop and refuse all tracking and ad requests.

Dont be silly. Companies and institutions can just pay or coerce the data operator for transmission, o do it when your on wifi.

In Sao Paulo Brazil, the mexican-based operator Claro offers free bandwidth for facebook and whatsapp access.

I imagine it would be possible to process media locally into actionable and highly compressed data. For instance use the google text-to-speech toolset on media while the phone is on sleep and even run it though a sentiment analyzer and wordlist. eye tracking and activity correlates are even more compressible.

Earlier in the year the police were monitoring activity on public wifi hotspots and using the info to target people labelled as undesirable in the quickly gentrifying city center.

Since I am a a)foreigner that b)transverses a diverse array of classes, groups, and political affiliations on a daily basis, i go ahead and always assume that i'm being constantly monitored.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#184

Post by xg15 »

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…

> Given that my data plan is 1.5 GB/month, I would notice if a gigabyte magically disappeared every month

Is that so? We're already used to updates, videos and even simple websites needing an enormous amount of data. I could easily imagine a gigabyte vanishing that you'd attribute to other things.

Also note that this is probably an average value, not an absolute.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#185

Post by ehsankia »

titzer wrote: post #138
ehsankia wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have any sources or proof that Play Services collects location, and that said collection doesn't follow the 4 points specified above?

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#186

Post by _ptgt »

leohutson wrote: post #165
_ptgt wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly, that's why "OK Google" isn't a thing.

There's an enormous difference in model complexity between key phrase detection and (general) automatic speech recognition + natural language processing. There's a reason nearly everything Google Assistant does except "OK Google" is done on Google's hardware.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#187

Post by UncleMeat »

code_duck wrote: post #133
_ptgt wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Siri listens for a hotword, which is tremendously easier than running general speech detection models all the time.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#188

Post by hardasspunk2 »

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…

But they could fetch metadata from our phone and generate data on their side.

Like photos we saved from internet, or search history, google drive backups, watched videos, liked photos, location maps. Even though you have 1.5gb/month plan, you are creating enough meta data that google can use for profiling.

They legit even store how you download a picture, via sharing, saving or dragging on desktop.

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#189

Post by [deleted] »

code_duck wrote: post #131
bb88 wrote: post #101

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’. 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 process…

[deleted]

Re: Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

#190

Post by watermelon0 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #35
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't news to you or me, but a surprising number of government investigations haven't happened, that should've . I appreciate Oracle's help in the matter, even if I have no particular love for them either. If someday someone's writing the "why we failed" article for Google, I suspect bullet one will be "we should've paid for our Java license". Whether or not what Google did was technically legal, the amount of scr…

>"we should've paid for our Java license". It will be more like "We should have bought Sun when we had the chance."

Am I the only one thinking it should be something along the lines of "We should not collect user data without an explicit consent?"
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