Unless I'm missing something, the article doesn't back up the claim in the title that "advertisers know where you are" at all.
Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
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Re: Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
#52I miss the times when they needed to trick you into installing spyware.
We now have fullstack client and server side malware built-in.
Re: Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
IPV4 geolocation is based on maintained databases (e.g. Ma Mind) that usually are city or street accurate. The popular rhetoric that having an IP is having the location is most often wrong unless Your users have static IPs registered to them. The way law enforcement does it is by subpoening the owner of the IP of pointing to the user associated with the IP at specific time but that still is prone to errors because of…
The combination of occasional GPS/Wifi location data and continuous IP data is pretty powerful though.
There's a setting hidden away in android allowing apps to scan local wifi/bluetooth networks even when wifi is turned "off". Enabled by default of course.
Re: Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
#54One of the most disappointing changes in Android recently is that any network-assisted geolocation plugins must now be installed as a system app, not a user app. That means that even if you use LineageOS where most Google stuff has been stripped out, getting a GPS fix through network assistance still sends data to Google servers. Only a tiny minority of users are comfortable working with the command line and will ins…
Do you know how to disable network assisted geolocation on Android 10? I have Lineage OS based on that version and neither following the guide for Android 11 nor for Android 9 makes the option show up, and the guide for Android 10 somehow doesn't exist. Maybe it's disabled because I don't have gapps?
Re: Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, wouldn't in that case Lineage be able to preinstall such service themselves? I'd expect them to?
No, the LineageOS devs say that their project does not aim to completely de-Google the OS, only remove Google Play Services and some Google applications like Maps. Thus, geolocation, DNS and login portal detection in LineageOS still use Google's servers.
Ugh, that's very disappointing then, I've always advised Lineage to people who wanted to deGoogle their phones :/
Re: Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
#56Re: Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
#57The number of government requests for user information is actually scary:
https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview
So Google handed over info on 175k accounts in the last half of 2019 alone? It seems it's becoming common practice to routinely pull citizens data, without much of a warrant and without the target's knowledge. There used to be a thing called secrecy of correspondence, preventing governments from reading your letters. Now whenever your name lands on some clerk's desk, and he feels you might be hiding something, he just requests all your emails.
This is all necessary because of "terrorist & child porn", but in reality we got mass surveillance. Next up gonna be social scores, it's like total authoritarianism in the making.
Re: Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
#58Just using GMail could help Google to find your approx. location 7/24. Your phone checking emails all the time, so google knows your ip.
Phones actually use push services (Googles FCM and Apples APNS among others) to get notifications. They don't really "check email" like your desktop PC does with a cron job.
Having said that, both Apple APNS and Google FCM do send regular heartbeat to their respective servers which make your positional tracking possible by both companies.
Re: Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
#59I am about to delete Google Maps on my iPhone. Are all those issues valid on an iPhone as well or does Apple limit it‘s privacy evading features? Edit: Done. Deleted it. Now if only I had an alternative to Garmin Connect. Love my fitness watch (Garmin Fenix), but hate the way they collect data about me. And no alternative.
I did this and I don't miss it. Apple Maps is good enough these days.
Apple Maps of course collects a lot of the exact same data (make sure you double check their settings. But you could always disable location history for Google Maps as well.)
Re: Google knows where we are, and so do advertisers
#60Is there another way? This form of crowd sourcing data is how you are able to know when your next bus or train arrives. But what is the alternative? Should the concerned government body take it up? Your government releases a Maps application and asks citizens to use that...People are still going to have privacy concerns with that! Or we simply decide to wait for the next bus and not bother to know when it arrives. Go…
> Or we simply decide to wait for the next bus and not bother to know when it arrives. Go back to a laid back life? Many mortals think that is a good idea, and, that is OK. I'm one of those mortals; my data connection is disabled on the phone and used only for emergencies (last time I've used it was months ago). Ultimately it fits in the big picture of the connected life. One can still live disconnected, and pay 10%…
I would love to do that but if I want encrypted messaging such as Signal, the internet has to be on... That's a problem.