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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

#281

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

notdang wrote: post #166
rantwasp wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so an android phone without the store? intriguing. at that point you might as well switch to a dumbphone. are dumb phones still a thing?

There are plenty of other stores to chose from. The problem here is that there are some apps that don't work without Google services, and those are the apps that you need the most: banking apps, payment apps, Uber, etc.

Aurora store lets you use play store apps. There are a minority that refuse to install from there but thats less than .5%

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

#283

Post by worik »

dcow wrote: post #257
edgyquant wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate that “reasonably think” defense. Yes most people, including myself, did think that vitamin water was healthy until reading the nutritional sheet. It’s one step away from selling chocolate as, “good for you bars,” and claiming no reasonable person would think they’re good for you.

I hate the lawsuit in the first place because nutrition information is printed on the back of every single bottle for exactly this reason and any actually concerned consumer (any reasonable thinking consumer) will simply look at the nutrition label when making purchase decisions. It was marketed as vitamin water because it does focus on providing additional vitamins. So what do we call it? Vitamin Sugar water? This d…

Vitamin Sugar water. Yes. That is what it should be called. Obviously.

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

#284

Post by worik »

dcow wrote: post #275
whyenot wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

flavored sugar water with vitamins 32.5g of sugar per bottle, most of which is fructose.

So everything that has sugar in it but doesn't explicitly spell it out in the name must be renamed to include a reference to sugar in the name? Frosted flakes -> sugar frosted flakes, rice crispy bars aren't just rice + crispy, they're rice + sugar + crispy. Orange juice -> orange juice and added sugar. I mean come on it doesn't work. All that said, the term vitamin is also entirely subjective. Nothing about "vitamin…

Frosted flakes -> sugar frosted flakes

rice + sugar + crispy.

orange juice and added sugar.

I mean come on it works well.

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

#285

Post by [deleted] »

wumpus wrote: post #156
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.

You shouldn't lump search ads in with display ads -- search ads are relevant to the search terms, and are much more valuable than display ads. Search ads get a much smaller lift from personalization.

[deleted]

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

#286

Post by isatty »

kache_ wrote: post #180
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.

I went through this and then realized that apple hardware is not meant for people who like to actually do things with their computers

Examples? I get plenty of work done on apple hardware and refuse any other devices for mission critical applications (daily driver devices are all Apple, because I know they’ll work, without me spending a whole day configuring it).

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

#287

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

m463 wrote: post #228
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…

The word advertising itself has been co-opted. It is like "freedom" or "justice" that is ambiguous and means one thing to advertisers and another to the public. I'm reminded of the vitamin water lawsuit "Coca-Cola criticized the suit as "ridiculous" on the grounds that "no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking Vitaminwater was a healthy beverage" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Brands#vitaminwater Th…

>To those men in their oddly similar dark suits, their cold eyes weighing and dismissing everything, the people of this valley were a foe to be defeated. As he thought of it, Dasein realized all customers were "The Enemy" to these men. Davidson and his kind were pitted against each other, yes, competitive, but among themselves they betrayed that they were pitted more against the masses who existed beyond that inner ring of knowledgeable financial operation.

>The alignment was apparent in everything they did, in their words as well as their actions. They spoke of "package grab level" and "container flash time" -- of "puff limit" and "acceptance threshold." It was an "in" language of militarylike maneuvering and combat. They knew which height on a shelf was most apt to make a customer grab an item. They knew the "flash time" -- the shelf width needed for certain containers. They knew how much empty air could be "puffed" into a package to make it appear a greater bargain. they knew how much price and package manipulation the customer would accept without jarring him into a "rejection pattern."

>And we're their spies, Dasein thought. the psychiatrists and psychologists - all the "social scientists" we're the espionage arm.

The Santaroga Barrier,

Frank Herbert, 1968

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

#288

Post by nine_k »

amelius wrote: post #120
foobiekr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no technical solution to this problem. First parties can just lie or use dark patterns to gain permission.

Look, if some authority finds your personal information on some server, and they can't produce your digital signature on a contract which says that the company can keep the information from some date to some other date, then they are in violation. It is simply not possible to lie about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature

Now every person needs to have a government-verified signing key, and suddenly consent given on disparate sites can be trivially linked to the same public key that verifies it...

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

#289

Post by notyourwork »

dcow wrote: post #280
squiggleblaz wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any actually concerned consumer (any reasonable thinking consumer) will simply look at the nutrition label when making purchase decisions. That isn't the definition of a reasonable consumer. Reasonable people don't have infinite time to second guess everything that people trusted to give them health information are saying. If they imply it's healthy and they're trusted to tell you whether it's healthy or not (i.e.…

You've trusted Coca Cola to give you health advice? No offense but that's patently insane. Your doctor gives you health advice not a sugared soft-drink company with a motive to withhold any negative information about its products from you so you'll continue to consume them. I assume you trust Google to give you privacy advice, no? I don't know what a reasonable consumer is then. The first thing I usually do when reac…

You cannot be serious with this line of thinking.

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

#290

Post by throwaway15593 »

Drew_ wrote: post #178
arkades wrote: post #31

Earlier this week there was a post regarding Google and its utilization of private health information. A number of Googlers came forward to describe how very seriously Google takes user privacy and keeping inappropriate data from being shared across silos. I got the overall impression of Googlers taking the position of “you guys don’t know how seriously we take peoples privacy.” If any of those Googlers would please…

I think its pretty straight forward that privacy protection for Google means protecting the data it has collected from their users. Not refraining or preventing itself from collecting user data. Google protects the privacy of your information from outsiders (and insiders) not from its own apps and services. That is what's meant when Google says they "take their user's privacy very seriously". And its obvious that thi…

Xoogler.

Yes, Google goes to immense lengths to protect user data in all its forms. That is security.

Privacy is orthogonal, and Google is well aware of the difference and how they complement each other.

You are completely wrong about Google's treatment of privacy.

There are plenty of companies that say they take privacy seriously. There are a handful that actually do. But smaller still is the number of those that have actually built what it takes to deliver on those promises, or re-engineered massive systems to deliver on privacy and transparency promises.

I suggest you look at any of Google's public privacy statements. There's no need to read between the lines.

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