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Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History

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Re: Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History

#141

Post by Sheep_McSheepy »

soup10 wrote: post #85
aiiane wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome to believe whatever you want, but a decent chunk of my day job is making sure that it's true.

I believe you, but I also believe the NSA and others siphon that data and archive it so it's kind of a minor point if google keeps it or not, privacy is a relative term these days. We can be fairly confident since the Snowden revelations that data dragnet operations are continuing and expanding in scope.

Looking at all leaks coming from Google, including Dragonfly and Maven do you think that NSA could access data directly without any engineer noticing it and going to the media with it? I doubt it.

Re: Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History

#142

Post by LostJourneyman »

user17843 wrote: post #86
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source, or any evidence that they don't? Google doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. This is literally their business model.

I think this is basically the GDPR rules, but I would need to look into the details more.

GDPR is not enforceable in the US, so this is applicable only to the EU. In the US AFIAK Google can collect anything that you consent to.

Re: Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History

#143

Post by Sheep_McSheepy »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #137
aiiane wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you choose to delete it, it will be deleted. (It takes nontrivial amounts of time to delete it across distributed service architecture but the deletions do get propagated.)

What about old backups (e.g. tape archives, which I think I've read Google uses), how do those get deleted? Do you store and encrypt the data with a user-specific key and then delete that key upon receiving a deletion request? Perhaps user data is never stored as part of tape backups? Perhaps you have a system which (very slowly) is able to load the appropriate tapes and purge the user's data?

Cannot comment in too much detail as not sure how much information is public but tape backups are also in scope for wipeout and user data is removed from them.

Re: Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History

#144

Post by Sheep_McSheepy »

One thing that I find very interesting in the comments is people's approach to Google services. It's no secret that Google makes money from ads and models based on the user usage on their free services.

A lot of people are complaining that if they disable data collection, try their hardest to not contribute to these data models and block the ads with ad blocker then some feature doesn't work for them. So you just want to use Google services completely for free without contributing anything.

Other people complain about permissions that Assistant or other products require. There's always a very good reason why these permissions are required that is not monetary. Each permission request goes through a lot of scrutiny, lawyers reviews, product reviews, approvals, etc. You can ask why disabling some permissions affects features that shouldn't need it. Sometimes it is lawyers fault, sometimes it's just engineers not supporting properly each of 2^{number of permissions} permission combinations.

Re: Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History

#146

Post by hcnews »

Sheep_McSheepy wrote: post #143
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about old backups (e.g. tape archives, which I think I've read Google uses), how do those get deleted? Do you store and encrypt the data with a user-specific key and then delete that key upon receiving a deletion request? Perhaps user data is never stored as part of tape backups? Perhaps you have a system which (very slowly) is able to load the appropriate tapes and purge the user's data?

Cannot comment in too much detail as not sure how much information is public but tape backups are also in scope for wipeout and user data is removed from them.

Is any copy of data anonymized and still kept around in ml models etc.?

Re: Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History

#147

Post by dvlsg »

puzzle wrote: post #54
o10449366 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's a side effect of Google's plan to "replace" Play Music with YouTube Music, even though they're two completely different services.

Maybe they're the same service behind the scenes. Would you store the same music twice, if you had to run both?

They don't seem to be. At least not in terms of content. YouTube music has songs that Google play doesn't, and vice versa.

The YouTube music experience is kind of odd. It seems that you can only listen to full albums if someone has uploaded them to YouTube as separate songs. Which makes sense, but it means that currently a lot of the music I listen to is nowhere to be found on YouTube music.

Re: Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History

#148

Post by greendestiny_re »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #63
hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point the big companies probably need to submit to some external audits to really get trust back.

I've worked on wipeout compliance at Google and IMHO there's no possibility that an outside auditor would ever be able to understand those systems to such an extent that they would discover a flaw in them that wasn't previously known to the many engineers who work full-time on wipeout. The systems are just too complex. One does not simply `find -type f /google` to figure out what data is available.

Saying that systems are too complex to be audited is a horrifying statement that reveals an environment ripe for abuse.

Re: Google Will Soon Let Users Automatically Scrub Location and Web History

#149

Post by vcxy »

aiiane wrote: post #14
duxup wrote: post #8

So does this actually delete it ... for Google? Deleting it from say my browser, maps, or other history is one thing. Does Google no longer have any of it? Also the top and bottom bars that leave me with like 1/3 usable space on google's blog is really frustrating to read on: https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/automatically...

Yes, if you choose to delete it, it will be deleted. (It takes nontrivial amounts of time to delete it across distributed service architecture but the deletions do get propagated.)

Thanks for replying to so many questions. I hope you aren't too discouraged by the negative responses, your work is appreciated!
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