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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

#231

Post by dredmorbius »

ryacko wrote: post #163

On a web forum for programmers on a website known for funding startups there are numerous discussions about Google being inconvenient about privacy and some of them are thinking about buying Apple products. As opposed to rooting their smartphone and using MicroG.

Rooting and re-romming is decidedly nontrivial in many cases, even for otherwise technically proficient users. Many devices are poorly supported, information is at best unclear, tool distribution is vastly less than trust-inspiring, data loss risk is high, and supported platforms for accomplishing root are limited.

Source: been trying (off and on) to root a device since 2015. By all accounts, it's not ROMable.

This being a key reason I've all but entirely soured on smartphones and tablets of any description, though Purism are looking interesting.

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

#232

Post by Dylan16807 »

dylan604 wrote: post #197
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That IE story was specifically about YouTubers during the transition to Google. A story about how they used a legacy YouTube permissions role to circumvent process and oversight.

It also specifically talked about Google Docs team doing the same thing which people at the time attributed to being first. This is what provided cover for the YT team. Not sure if you're trying to provide defensive cover to Google with your comment or not, but it clearly goes to show they are not above these kind of dark UI patterns.

A one-time banner is not a dark UI pattern, jeez.

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

#233

Post by dmitriid »

joshuamorton wrote: post #191
dmitriid wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's becoming more apparent to me that you, either intentionally or not, aren't clear on what the status quo was, or what this change changed. It's becoming more apparent that the whole conversation kinda derailed from " privacy engineering team " which engineers privacy (whatever that means at Google) does a shitty job to "we should celebrate them for doing just the minimum amount of work for something that has al…

> derailed from "privacy engineering team" which engineers privacy (whatever that means at Google) does a shitty job to Actually no, it was you who derailed an otherwise unrelated conversation to that topic. > we should celebrate them for doing just the minimum amount of work for something that has already been possible, if spread across many UIs The "minumum amount of work possible" was doing nothing. Let's isolate…

I’ve already answered that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19811270

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

#234

Post by luckylion »

SquareWheel wrote: post #209
luckylion wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you just want to use Google services completely for free without contributing anything. Not necessarily. I believe that google's services are good enough to use them, and I'd certainly pay a few bucks a month to do so and be their customer - and not be the product that they sell to their customers. I'm also pretty sure that they'd make more money off of me paying them for providing a service to me than they make…

Why not pay for a GSuite account? That seems to meet your criteria.

That would be more of a "paying for something", I think. I don't use Google Apps, I have a gmail account that I don't regularly use. I'm a simple man, I just use search (and it's variations) and maps, and the occasional YT video. I understand that GSuite doesn't touch those, so while a good idea from a moral view ("I can't pay you for this, so I'll pay you for that which I never use but can pay for"), it doesn't change the privacy invading parts of the products I actually do use.

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

#235

Post by luckylion »

britch wrote: post #195
luckylion wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you just want to use Google services completely for free without contributing anything. Not necessarily. I believe that google's services are good enough to use them, and I'd certainly pay a few bucks a month to do so and be their customer - and not be the product that they sell to their customers. I'm also pretty sure that they'd make more money off of me paying them for providing a service to me than they make…

This is it for me as well. A lot of online publications frustrate me with this as well. They're only supported through advertisements, and request that you disable your ad blocker. LET ME GIVE YOU MONEY! I would pay for the ability to read your site. Right now I have the choice of ad blocking and preventing them from earning much of anything or giving up my privacy to support them. It's especially ironic given that m…

Yeah. I understand it may not be worth it to set up regular membership programs and collect fees for that, but at least have a tip jar.

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

#236

Post by grey-area »

tylerl wrote: post #226
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…

Here's your answer: There's no such thing, at least at scale, as sharing your information without also storing it. Not if you want the system to be reliable. So in order to make Google share your location with others, you have to give them permission to store your location. This should be self-evident enough if you take a moment to think about it. As for lumping web history together with location history, it turns ou…

As for lumping web history together with location history, it turns out you can derive the latter if you know the former

So, the question remains, why do they need to record your web history if you want to save your location? You can't derive it that way round.

I have all this stuff turned off, there is no good reason for google to store it, it's a privacy nightmare, esp given automated sharing with the state.

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

#237

Post by Sir_Substance »

Sheep_McSheepy wrote: post #139
Sir_Substance wrote: post #109

But only if you have a google account. If you don't have a google account, there's no way to request your shadow profile get scrubbed. As usual.

If you don't have google account then your data is stripped from all PII making identification virtually impossible. How do you want to instruct Google to delete your data if it cannot tell what's your data?

>How do you want to instruct Google to delete your data if it cannot tell what's your data?

If it has enough information to append to a shadow profile, it has enough information for me to request that the entire shadow profile get deleted.

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

#238

Post by soup10 »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #215
soup10 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

you think that the thousands of NSA employees whose mission it is to collect and analyze that data just sat around and declared defeat after they started encrypting it? lol

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

#240

Post by ruhana »

Chilenazo wrote: post #90

Whenever I want to send an email through gmail in my phone, it doesn't suggest senders unless I give them permission to access my phone contacts. Does anybody know a way around this?

Connect through email to email or Gmail to Gmail in your phone https://onlineitguru.com/tableau-online-training-placement.h...
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