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

Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

motherboard.vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 163 posts

Re: Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

#31

Post by lern_too_spel »

forgottenpass wrote: post #5
hcnews wrote: post #4

Say what you want about Google, its one of the few companies with a moral compass.

Dragonfly.

Ended before it even launched. https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-se...

Compare to Apple, which actually handed over the iCloud keys of all its Chinese customers to the Chinese government.

We should continue to pressure Google to make fewer mistakes like these, but let's not pretend they're in the same league as truly bad actors like Apple and Facebook when it comes to privacy.

Re: Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

#32

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

rightbyte wrote: post #19
cokernel_hacker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. Google makes it pretty clear that they do not sell any personal information to advertisers: https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/

But they do. They let them target ads based on your location. It's the same thing as selling personal data. If someone clicks a location targeted ad the advertiser know the persons location. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722043?hl=en "Google Ads location targeting allows your ads to appear in the geographic locations that you choose: countries, areas within a country, a radius around a location , or l…

You're not going to be able to uniquely target someone in a radius, since the minimum is 1km (and I guess Google would artificially widen the radius to prevent uniquely identifying people in sparsely populated areas). You've also got to entice them to click, and that's notoriously difficult.I mean it might work occasionally but it's never going to be the shortest path to surveiling an individual. I would guess that ~nobody is successfully using ads to determine individual people's locations.

https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Advanced-Features/...

Disclosure: I work at big G, not on ads.

Re: Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

#33

Post by kevinh »

x220 wrote: post #24
izacus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google employees risked their jobs to protest against Dragonfly.

people with perhaps the highest demand for their labor than any other professionals risked their cushy jobs to influence their company to not be complicit in the censorship of over a billion people with a regime that has committed genocide? that's superhuman dedication right there, good job Google superheroes

There are other tech companies doing related work in China. Are you saying that the employees of those companies are all complicit with genocidal actions?

Re: Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

#34

Post by mden »

x220 wrote: post #22
mden wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand the sentiment of this comment, isn't it still a good thing to reduce the number of companies with this data? As the companies that track your location goes down, it becomes easier to argue against the other ones doing it. Plus in the very least less places that could leak the data, so it would still be some form of progress.

>isn't it still a good thing to reduce the number of companies with this data? Maybe you want multiple companies competing in the same realm rather than Google handling most of the private data and becoming incredibly powerful. Maybe you want to unmask Google's motives so as to not play into their PR strategy.

The first point sounds like a defeatist mentality (of course assuming we share the ideal of our location data not being sold and if possible even stored) - at what point would we be able to push companies away from using location data if we are afraid it will make the others more powerful?

Sure "unmask" their motives, but it's also worth considering if their actions are a net good or not.

Re: Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

#35

Post by skybrian »

rightbyte wrote: post #19
cokernel_hacker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. Google makes it pretty clear that they do not sell any personal information to advertisers: https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/

But they do. They let them target ads based on your location. It's the same thing as selling personal data. If someone clicks a location targeted ad the advertiser know the persons location. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722043?hl=en "Google Ads location targeting allows your ads to appear in the geographic locations that you choose: countries, areas within a country, a radius around a location , or l…

There is location leakage but it's clearly not the same because:

- they don't get your location if you don't click on the ad. Since people don't click on ads very often, only rarely does an advertisers get a person's location, and without a name attached.

- Mobile phone companies were letting people query a user's location based on their real name. How would you do that with advertising?

We need to move beyond one-bit thinking. Location-revealing services aren't all the same.

Re: Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

#36

Post by ThrustVectoring »

chomp wrote: post #3
Despegar wrote: post #2

I mean sure. Google certainly doesn't want wireless carriers to compete with them in advertising, and everyone having access to location data from smartphones just devalues Google's own access. https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio...

Yep I was just going to say this. Google already sells your location data to advertisers, they are not the hero in this story.

They don't sell your location data, they sell targeting options for specific geographic locations. These are quite different. I'm okay with seeing an ad targeted at anyone within walking distance of a cafe. I'm not okay with my personal location getting sold to whoever thinks they have a valuable enough use for it.

Re: Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

#37

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

yaacov wrote: post #27
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google makes it pretty clear that they do not sell any personal information to advertisers Facebook’s used that like, too.

Facebook also doesn't sell personal information to advertisers. Both Facebook and Google let advertisers target ads based on location and other personal info, which is not the same thing as actually providing that information to third parties.

I suspect JumpCrisscross is referring to the data leak scandals via the API that have been in the news in the last year. Of course, this was also not Facebook selling information. Rather, it was Facebook allowing users to share information about their friends automatically and without the friends' consent via the API. Not great, but not selling user information either.

Re: Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

#38

Post by taeric »

cokernel_hacker wrote: post #7
chomp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep I was just going to say this. Google already sells your location data to advertisers, they are not the hero in this story.

Citation needed. Google makes it pretty clear that they do not sell any personal information to advertisers: https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/

The catch here, in many ways, is Google owns the advertiser marketplace. Literally, if you want to sell ads on common android settings based on a user's location, you have to do it with Google's data.

So, in many ways they don't sell a person's data to advertisers, per se. However, they do control access to people located in a given area. Not sure there is much of a meaningful difference, for most people.

Re: Google Demanded T-Mobile, Sprint Not Sell Google Fi Customers' Location Data

#40

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

ams6110 wrote: post #25
wlesieutre wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting someone target you with their ad based on your location is not the same thing as from telling them where you are

Or telling them who you are. Google knows, but AFAIK they don't pass that along to the advertiser.

And that's important. I'd rather just Google (which isn't great) have that information than literally anyone willing to pay $0.50 for it (which is infinitely worse).
Post reply on HN