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Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

businessinsider.com

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Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#181

Post by judge2020 »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #74

Google had a brilliant advertising business with AdWords originally, where the ads were simply based on the search term and not a bunch of Orwellian surveillance on the person searching. From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best. And per this article, those gains are clearly coming at the expense of user trust and goodwi…

Note that contextual ads still perform better than personalized ads on search results, given how you still don’t see eg. Spotify ads on search results for anything other than music.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#182

Post by [deleted] »

grammers wrote: post #151

What really devastated me was when I found out that even if you try to keep yourself private, you'll get exposed by your friends: Just by tracking that you are regularly close to others, for example meeting for a camping trip, you suddenly get camping advertisements - probably because your friends searched for something or booked the trip via Gmail or whatever. I don't really know how it works, but it's awfully scary…

[deleted]

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#184

Post by kaba0 »

nexuist wrote: post #128
coliveira wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that the target ads is just a cover, the real reason they want to track users is to give more data to their in-house AI system that learns what people do once they reach certain page. This knowledge (what people will do) is what is important to them, rather than simply showing certain ads. For example, if Google knows the profit potential of certain actions, they will raise the ad cost on that property…

If this was true then every single ad campaign would be worth it then, no? I thought that lots of people try Google or FB ads with a couple thousand dollars and never recoup operating costs. If Google knows how much profit a certain page could bring then they could also tell you exactly what to price your product at to maximize returns.

How would it profit Google?

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#185

Post by commoner »

grishka wrote: post #157
sunstone wrote: post #3

I've had a string of Google phones going back to the Nexus 5x but, for the very reasons laid out in this article, my next phone will likely be from Apple. That will be my first Apple product.

You can use an Android phone without Google services. You don't even need root or a custom ROM for that — there's a "disable" button on the app details page of every Google app, including GSF. You can complete the initial setup fully offline, too. In case you do need Google services, but want to have a say about which and how, there's MicroG, an open-source implementation of some of the most used ones like GCM (push…

microG (a replacement for Google Play Services) includes a free and open source network location provider called UnifiedNlp:

https://github.com/microg/UnifiedNlp

UnifiedNlp allows you to choose the backends your Android device uses to determine the location, without providing any data to Google. Options include:

- Mozilla Location Services: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.ichna...

- Apple Location Services: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.apple...

- OpenCellID (offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gfd.gsmlocation/

- Radiocells.org (optionally offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.openbmap.unifiedNlp/

- Déjà Vu (offline cache using Wi-Fi and cellular data): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fitchfamily.android.deja...

The easiest way to use microG is to switch to an Android distribution that has it preinstalled:

- CalyxOS (supports Google Pixel 2 and later): https://calyxos.org

- LineageOS for microG (supports all devices supported by LineageOS): https://lineage.microg.org

- /e/ (some overlap with LineageOS, but also supports different devices): https://e.foundation

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#186

Post by yosamino »

azalemeth wrote: post #168
JCM9 wrote: post #13

There’s a huge privacy battle on the horizon in tech. The initial scuffles are just the beginning. Google and Facebook’s business models depend deeply on being able to track information that consumers are increasingly unhappy to share. Both companies attempts to diversify their dependency on such info for their revenue have been broadly unsuccessful (Google fiber or a Google car anyone?). Meanwhile the likes of Apple…

One thing I've been meaning to do for a while is try to use a 'hardcore' AOSP 'de-googled' Android rom, like ParanoidAndroid. I've no idea how much of a pain in the arse this will be. Heck, being rooted causes enough unexpected "why do you not work" moments for me. If anything, I feel Google has got more hostile to the privacy-conscious user over time. The trouble with privacy as a product is that it's _very_ hard to…

I've never run, willing or knowlingly, an android phone that has not been de-googlified as my main phone (since my n900 died in 2012 ... I miss it ).

For my purposes, that works out well, there are, within reason, replacements for all the basics. And now that I have done it for so long, I don't really know how having an android phone with google works. The niche is big enough that something like https://microg.org/ exists that implements some of the core libraries for using google, without using google code. This enable installing some things from the playstore if neccessary ( I have not had the need - but I understand I am in a tiny minority ) - and it made it possible to install some corona contact tracing apps without having to rely on the google implementation.

I am sure though, and I see it around me, that things won't continue exactly as before just without google, because of how deeply ingrained tracking everyone and everything all the time is.

I don't know how hardcore you wanna get, but you might also want to take a look here https://e.foundation/ , here https://lineageos.org and here https://f-droid.org

There's like - dozens of us

...and thank you for reminding me of ParanoidAndroid. I've not tried them in a while.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#187

Post by rodgerd »

nwellnhof wrote: post #167
QuadrupleA wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one study - 1st link is a ZdNet summary about it, and 2nd is a direct link to the paper: https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-research-shows-personalize... https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/...

It depends a lot on the content. If you're targeting a lucrative niche, contextual ads can be effective. But for the majority of (mostly low-quality) content, it's hard to find well-matched ads. The study you cited is based on "a rich dataset of millions of advertising transactions completed across multiple websites owned by a large media company". It's probably not that representative.

I'm glad that your anecdotes trump an actual study.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#188

Post by ipaddr »

graphtrader wrote: post #138
croes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part is, that it's not proven that all this tailored ads really have the desired effect. Especially if many buy those ads. Most of them are useless because the targeted customer only choose one to buy from for a wanted product, if he is choice is based on ads at all.

This is the real rub to me. It would be one thing if you rip off all my data but I am constantly seeing ads for cool things I would never have found otherwise and can't wait to buy. Instead the ads are always shit that I never even consider. If things were not tailored I would probably randomly run across products that are just outside my current taste but at least spark some interest.

The one who pays the most is the one who gets the spot. Tailored to make the most profit and you are part of a group of people who buy 'x' product. The group might be males, 20-25 year olds, sailors from Malta. You would expect ads for sailing equipment or vacations or beer. This group get's an ads for Corn Flakes instead. Why because Kellogg want to attract more young males and they may target a spot like sailing where they will sponser races and buy as many digital ads in that category as they can. You seeing cereal ads makes it seem very untargeted but in reality your data has been highly targetted to give you the unwanted ad.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#189

Post by justnotworthit »

yccs27 wrote: post #149
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blocking works perfectly fine, wdym?

Got any recommendations for blocking youtube ads in safari?

https://adguard.com/en/blog/how-to-add-a-shortcut-to-block-y...

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#190

Post by dheera »

EastSmith wrote: post #175
nwellnhof wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much Which research? From my experience, personalized ads perform ~50% better than non-personalized ads. This would also explain why Google and Facebook are fighting tooth and nail to keep their tracking infrastructure.

DuckDuckGo have said that they make less money, because they use only the search term not other data/tracking. But they still make money.

Big companies have "fiduciary duty" to do the thing that gets them the most money within legal bounds, and not the ethically right thing.

As in, they have a duty to breach ethics for profit as long as it's legal.

Stupid concept which I wish we could abolish but that's the way the economy is currently setup.

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