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

81–90 of 163 posts

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

#81

Post by kllrnohj »

penagwin wrote: post #52
piyush_soni wrote: post #44

How people's sentiments change here based on who tries to protect their privacy. If it's Apple, "wow, they are god's own people with purest intentions of protecting users' privacy". When Google does it : "Yeah, because they want to sell it themselves so obviously they don't want any competition".

One is a massive advertising company that makes the vast majority of it's money on advertising and has a history of invasive privacy issues. The other one AFAIK doesn't sell user data, has publicly denied to help the FBI (Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied), and has put in a large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down). Obvio…

> Have other companies done that? If not then they assume complied

Google literally lead the charge on this with their transparency report for government data requests and won huge victories in allowing for the reporting of things like FISA requests.

It's great that Apple has followed Google's lead and also publishes a transparency report, but their own report also clearly shows that they DO comply with government requests: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

And both Google & Apple have comparable percentages of requests honored per their own reports.

Regardless an "assume complied" is an illogical position to take here. Assume a company did work that they didn't have to for one-off requests? That's a safe thing to assume they didn't do. Assume they did nothing, because that's way easier, cheaper, and simpler for them. Which means assume they didn't help anyone, including the FBI.

> large amount of effort to protect privacy (It's one of the main arguments of why IOS/OSX is so locked down).

No. iOS / OSX are locked down to prevent competition. There's no privacy benefit in keeping the user from poking at their own device.

Apple did a lot of work specifically to enable apps to do things like track a user's location in the background. Things that didn't used to be possible, but which Apple put in work to do. The only significant thing they did here on iOS was make it a runtime permission, which other platforms have similarly done. OSX continues to have no real restrictions or enforcement for apps, except to try and prevent you from installing them outside of the app store.

They put more effort into bragging about their privacy than they did in actually improving privacy. Advertising turns out to be extremely effective, as Apple frequently proves.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #68
TACIXAT wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a difference between allowing ads to target an area and selling someone's real time location. I'm against the collection of data generally because that data can always end up in court, but Google has never given people access to my real time location.

> but Google has never given people access to my real time location. As long as your Google account remains secured and no one manages to sneak a 2nd Google Account on your phone, that is. Find My Phone is a real time tracker that can be abused e.g. by spouses or stalkers. IIRC only triggering the "audible ring" leaves a trace on the phone (a notification + the obvious sound), to check if someone used FMP for trackin…

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by ucaetano »

protomyth wrote: post #71
ucaetano wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, Apple does when it is required to make money, like in China. They handed over all iCloud data to the government. Companies are companies, they don't "care" about privacy, or anything at all. Google, Apple, Facebook, they're all in this for the money. And that is fine. The sooner we realize that, the better.

Every company follows the law of each country they are in unless they are criminals. China is a country that affords no privacy.

Yes, and faced with the option of making money in China and eliminating any and all user privacy, or not making money in China, Apple chose the former.

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

#84

Post by sbov »

mschuster91 wrote: post #68
TACIXAT wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a difference between allowing ads to target an area and selling someone's real time location. I'm against the collection of data generally because that data can always end up in court, but Google has never given people access to my real time location.

> but Google has never given people access to my real time location. As long as your Google account remains secured and no one manages to sneak a 2nd Google Account on your phone, that is. Find My Phone is a real time tracker that can be abused e.g. by spouses or stalkers. IIRC only triggering the "audible ring" leaves a trace on the phone (a notification + the obvious sound), to check if someone used FMP for trackin…

Yeah, if someone hacks my phone/account, then they will have access to my location. If that happens them having my location ranks pretty low on my list of concerns.

The recommendation that you could disable GPS is pointless because if they could sneak a 2nd account on it they can also re-enable GPS.

Cell phone companies have your location regardless of whether or not GPS is enabled. You don't even need a smart phone.

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

#85

Post by noxToken »

icelancer wrote: post #79
protomyth wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't sell data to third parties, so Apple doesn't do that.

Yeah, they just gave it to China.

Selling user data to a 3rd party company and turning over user data to a local government are two very different things. They both have their own sets of implications. Ideally, you'd wish that a company would never turn your personal data over to either. However, governments and 3rd parties are very much not the same.

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

#86

Post by bduerst »

skybrian wrote: post #35
rightbyte wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-bi…

Website owners already have your general location based on IP - they're not getting 'leaked' any information from location-based ad targeting that isn't already available to them when you visit the site.

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

#87

Post by pwg »

ariwilson wrote: post #72
pwg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the data underlying both use cases is the same. In order to target adds "at people in a narrow geographical area" I need to know when those people are in that "narrow geographical area". I.e., I need to know their location to an accuracy good enough to say they are in that "narrow geographical area" (or in this case, their phones location, which is a good proxy for their location). Once I can know "the…

I don't understand what you're trying to say. If you already know where someone is, what's the point of using targeted ads to try to locate them? The point of OP is that I can't use targeted ads to answer the question "Person X: where are they?".

I'm saying that the underlying data is the same for both, so allowing one (targeted ads based on location) provides the data necessary for "locate where someone lives/works/hangs out/etc.".

With the result that you have to believe that the "targeted ads" provider is both secure and ethical.

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

#88

Post by vanattab »

Ask HN: Is anyone here happy with Google Fi service? I ordered a Pixel 3 phone directly from Google Fi and signed up for service with Google Fi the end of December. When I ordered the phone it showed up as in stock and estimated I would get my phone by the 4th of January. On the 2nd I got an email saying that the phone shipping was delayed and I would receive an email when it ships. I have heard nothing from google so I called Google Fi support and was told I would get an email from the shipping team letting my know when my phone would ship but that was 2 days ago and have not heard a word from them. I tried following there instructions to cancel the order but when you click the edit order button where they say there is a cancel button none can be found. Anyone else have similar experience? Before I placed my order I was thinking the user experience from Google must be better then T-Mobile or Sprint but I am starting to regret the choice.

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

#90

Post by jklinger410 »

linsomniac wrote: post #57

So many people are saying "this is just further evidence of Google doing evil". Unpopular opinion: I feel like this is further evidence of Google being good stewards of user data. There are many reasons Google may want to protect this data: They don't want user backlash from revelations like this, they don't want to have to be legislated, they don't want the PR spend of having to recover from such reporting. Or it co…

Google, data point for data point, is one of the best stewards of data potentially in history.

They have more information about you that they choose not to sell than you can even imagine. They literally set the high-bar for PII and other types of tracking data.

The only ones who know nearly as much are Telcos and they have been openly selling and sharing all of your info to governments and shady shell corporations since day 1.

Edit - Forgot that Facebook is catching up to Google on data and they have been a leaky cup since day one as well.

Post reply on HN