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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

#211

Post by bryanbuckley »

mattlondon wrote: post #3

This is welcomed, but they might do better to remove the requirement to have the Web/Location/App history enabled for apparently unrelated features. E.g. I cant store my home location in Google Maps without turning on Web & App activity history. Why? I cant share my current location (not historic, just my latest location - they only need to store one) with my partner unless I turn on Web and Location history. Why? I…

Another example, text-to-speech on Gboard requires the "Google" app, unfortunately.

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

#212

Post by YokoZar »

craftyguy wrote: post #180
user17843 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

GPDR is not recognized in all countries, and most notably not in the country google calls 'home'.

Google is an Irish company.

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

#213

Post by taneq »

gonyea wrote: post #206
o10449366 wrote: post #23

The funny thing is that Google will still let you store your home address and they'll display it on the map, but if you have Location History turned off they'll refuse to list it as an autocomplete option when you search for addresses or directions. They know what it is, but they won't let you actually use it unless you expose everything else. It's extremely user hostile and there's no good reason to do it. Edit: To…

This is hilarious. Every single Google conspiracy is basically because some Google Engineer tried to DRY up functionality in an insanely complicated system.

It's funny, though, how every single "conspiracy" just randomly ends up falling in the "fine if you give them full access, fails if you turn off location services" quadrant. Like, I've not once seen a mistake in the direction of "eh just turn off that data collection point and it'll fix it."

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

#214

Post by taneq »

Faark wrote: post #155
xvector wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just stopped using Android after shit like this. Privacy is an afterthought at best, despite the great new permissions model. And it's absolutely not Android's fault as much it is app developers' faults. Want to use an app that tracks your dreams? Most devs will have you sign up for their terrible service so they can store the information in plaintext on a server. At least with iOS most devs seem to opt for CloudKi…

> And it's absolutely not Android's fault as much it is app developers' faults I do see it as a shortcoming of android that i cannot redirect unwanted capabilities into a harmless sandbox version of those.

Privacy Guard on LineageOS does exactly that. It's not Android, it's Google.

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

#215

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

soup10 wrote: post #196
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Google internal traffic is encrypted, and I'd guess they use some sort of forward secrecy. I guess it's going to be basically impossible to use split fibers to sip at that data.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/prism-heres-how-the-nsa-wireta... this is just naive

The change was made exactly in response to PRISM. In fact, it was something that was already rolling out at the time, but the disclosure of that program caused the effort to be dramatically accelerated. At this point, and for quite some time, they've been using encryption for almost all traffic on the internal network.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-en...

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

#216

Post by taneq »

aiiane wrote: post #22
loudtieblahblah wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply do not believe this. Unless they're audited by a source that can be trusted and have the findings made public, I will not believe it either.

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

Your comment here is the first direct indication I've had (at any level of trust) that Google does in fact delete things if you ask it to. Maybe it's dumb but I feel a tiny bit more inclined to trust these options now than I did before. Thanks for your contribution (to this thread and to deleting stuff).

Edit: Stray somewhat-related question just in case you'd know, why is it that if I open YouTube in a private browsing window on a computer with freshly cleared cache, it asks me which of my two Gmail accounts I want to log in with? Is it just IP address based plus some browser fingerprinting?

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

#217

Post by gonyea »

taneq wrote: post #213
gonyea wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hilarious. Every single Google conspiracy is basically because some Google Engineer tried to DRY up functionality in an insanely complicated system.

It's funny, though, how every single "conspiracy" just randomly ends up falling in the "fine if you give them full access, fails if you turn off location services" quadrant. Like, I've not once seen a mistake in the direction of "eh just turn off that data collection point and it'll fix it."

Imagine you have ~billions of users and 99.9% of them use the default. Do you put your eng effort towards power-user flexibility for the tinfoil hat crowd or do you improve popular features?

In the case mentioned, searching "your locations" appears to be just all on or all off (I have no insider knowledge of Maps). That greatly reduces the surface area for heisenbugs in a high QPS system.

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

#218

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

taneq wrote: post #213
gonyea wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hilarious. Every single Google conspiracy is basically because some Google Engineer tried to DRY up functionality in an insanely complicated system.

It's funny, though, how every single "conspiracy" just randomly ends up falling in the "fine if you give them full access, fails if you turn off location services" quadrant. Like, I've not once seen a mistake in the direction of "eh just turn off that data collection point and it'll fix it."

The reason for that is pretty obvious isn't it? Very few systems depend on an absence of data to work. However, many systems can be designed which depend on the presence of data. If a setting affects the presence of data in some Google-internal databases, turning that setting off will disable any features that depend on the presence of that data in that database.

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

#219

Post by dang »

dmitriid wrote: post #121
aiiane wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'justcodebruh' your comment is marked as dead, but to answer your question I work on Google's privacy engineering team.

Your team is doing a shitty job, to be completely honest. This comment and all the comments beliw it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19809168

Attacking another user like that will get you banned here. No matter how you feel about privacy or Google or anything, please follow the site guidelines, and please don't post here if you can't treat your fellow community members with respect.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#220

Post by dang »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #18

uh huh

Would you please stop dragging down the quality of this site by posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments? If you don't believe something, fine—the rest of us don't necessarily need to hear about that, but ok, one comment was fine. This one, though, is both rude and dumb. Posts like this will get you banned from HN, so please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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