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Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

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Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You're right, but the percentage of Google users aware of how evil they are is probably less than 0.5%." Not unaware of, just don't care. Most people aren't persnickety, anal, border line autistic nerds so Google/Facebook knowing who they know or where they are, when they're using software to tell their friends where they are or are using maps to literally work out where they are right now is just not an issue. If y…

> Most people aren't persnickety, anal, border line autistic nerds so Google/Facebook knowing who they know or where they are, when they're using software to tell their friends where they are or are using maps to literally work out where they are right now is just not an issue. Please don't insult people for caring about privacy.

Not "caring about privacy"; having retarded notions that you can walk around with a tracking device like one might expect a criminal be forced to carry and somehow still have privacy by deleting this cookie or logging out of that service.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#342
post #297

I am a privacy conscious person, I've been using the Here We Go app on iOS for directions: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city-navigation/id... It has very cool feature - offline maps. By downloading your state/country's maps, you don't have to query a server for every little mapping request. Between this app and saved podcasts, I'm able to switch off my mobile large chunks of the day.

Seems like a pretty cool app, but what's their business model? App is free, there are no IAP. My default assumption is either they're selling some kind of personal location data, even if it's not live or they are running on funding and this app will be either gone or infested with ads within a few years.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#343
post #297

I am a privacy conscious person, I've been using the Here We Go app on iOS for directions: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city-navigation/id... It has very cool feature - offline maps. By downloading your state/country's maps, you don't have to query a server for every little mapping request. Between this app and saved podcasts, I'm able to switch off my mobile large chunks of the day.

If you're privacy conscious, why do you have a smart phone at all? Get a standalone GPS Even in airplane mode, your phone is tracking where you go with the accelerometer. I don't have time to look up the video right now, but this has been tested.

> If you're privacy conscious, why do you have a smart phone at all? Get a standalone GPS

There are trade offs between privacy and security, it's not an all or nothing affair. Even a dumb phone can be tracked via cell tower pings... I think most people who say things like you did aren't effectively thread modeling.

For example, while I do own a smartphone, I turn it off and put it in a faraday bag during Defcon :)

>Even in airplane mode, your phone is tracking where you go with the accelerometer. I don't have time to look up the video right now, but this has been tested.

I'll acknowledge that's theoretically possible, but I'm selective about what apps I grant location privlidges to - I don't think most companies would want to risk fines etc by circumventing.

If I'm attending an especially sensitive meeting, I wouldn't bring any phone with me.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#344
post #41

On Android there's also the constant nagging to turn on GPS every time you open the app just to check the opening hours of some business. Super frustrating.

A maps app wanting to show the current location upon startup - isn't that to be expected?

No. 95% of the times I use it it's for checking opening hours and phone numbers of restaurants and stores in the other end of town. The other 5% of the time it's to check the distance from a hotel to nearby airport and attractions before I even decide to book the trip.

My current location has no relevance whatsoever in any of these use cases. My last viewed location in the app is usually much more relevant than my current physical location. And if its not then the center my location button is just one click away (plus another click for consent)

Very very rarely I do actually use turn-by-turn navigation but those few times shouldn't have destroy the experience for the more used scenarios. It would be so easy to prompt for location when this is activated and that's how it used to work before. This is very clearly a dark UX just to collect more data because I haven't met anyone who likes this "feature".

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ‘watch later’ seems to have a problem catching videos. I add videos and they are gone from there. I created my own ‘Watch Now’ playlist, which consistently works.

This might be due to the fact that corporate shitheads decided to take down one of the videos you added. I've seen such videos transform into [video removed] in custom playlists (which is infuriating to no end, you can't even know what the video was about to look it up somewhere else), maybe it causes videos to disappear from Watch Later entirely.

Right, for normal playlists YouTube leaves a placeholder saying that there was a deleted video. The frustrating thing about how they do it is that there’s no indication what the video was, unless you remember. Does it handle Watch Later differently? I do know that it seemed to have odd or buggy behavior which is why I stopped using it.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#347
From my experience, multiple companies have caught on and are doing this.

- NVidia: Block their telemetry, and their driver installer will block, even if you downloaded that massive driver package.

- Microsoft: Block their telemetry and some aspects of XBox One will break, including the Windows-10 streaming of the XBox. I found this to not be consistently true, so I am not sure what is going on behind the scene.

- Occulus Rift: You can't even block this telemetry. It's in the same app flow as the headset. If you block the telemetry to Facebook, the headset won't even work.

I predict that more and more companies will move critical services to the same DNS name or IP that their telemetry are using.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#349
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im using newpipe on android and adding the rss feeds to newsblur so I can watch on desktop. its actually really good since you get away from their suggestions side bar and autoplay (and the UI). newsblur let's you organise things into subfolders too which is helpful the other thing in going to start using is youtube-dl to download my watch later videos and then use something like emby or plex to watch them. maybe do…

Yeah, I use youtube-dl a lot. They other thing I do is open a youtube link in VLC. But given that VLC can open a youtube link and yt-dl can grab most content, I'd love to build an app that has a proper UX. I keep designing one in my mind - I should get around to at least proposing it to see what others think

Yeah, popcorn time for youtube would be wonderful.

Re: Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with YouTube?

In addition to those technical options, they have been substantially reducing revenue to producers and their algorithms have been shifting popular videos out of visible areas. Often popular producers will see sudden losses in their incomes. Videos are not enough to sustain, they're like apps; a part of a larger revenue model. This disincentivizes smaller, interesting producers and pushes the platform to be more like…

I find it almost impossibly difficult to find older videos now.
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