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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

#301

Post by [deleted] »

mistrial9 wrote: post #50
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…

as an American skilled in computer science, I am literally aghast at what the mobile phone has done in barely fifteen years, degrading decades and in fact centuries of individual rights mores. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, in East Asia, there was a completely different series of social evolutions, such that a large majority of people are not bothered and in fact expect services tied to identity tied to finance. Th…

[deleted]

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

#302

Post by whoknowswhat11 »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #25
whoknowswhat11 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You paid for Google maps - weird

They paid for a phone advertised to include this service, so, in a way, yes, they did.

I'm afraid you don't understand the flow of money here at all.

Google or others pay to be the default app for maps / search etc on things like iPhone.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/google-...

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

#303

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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'd like an iPhone except I can't sideload apps like newpipe. I can't control my phone.

I've had Nexus 4, 5, 6, and Pixel 1, 2, 3, and 4.

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

#304

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

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…

That would be an improvement on the status quo

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

#305

Post by cookiengineer »

meltedcapacitor wrote: post #215
cookiengineer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in the future in order to stay private online, there's no way unless web traffic is decentralized off their servers. That is the real power behind a peer-to-peer system in my opinion: Offloading, and therefore removing the capabilities to track anything as a single node in the system. The only issue is peer-to-peer transport encryption, which can be solved if done correctly. Something like "statistically corr…

If a peer to peer system of interest caught on, I'm sure google would be glad to run 90% of the nodes (incognito) to have some view of what's happening therein.

Well, that depends on the scenarios that the threat model tries to identify.

The question at this point (or rather in that specific moment) is what will lead to classifying malicious actors, and how these malicious actors can be identified permanently.

If it's a blocked IP: not a good solution. If it's a TLS certificate for said peer: probably better.

Fighting anti censorship mechanisms is really hard due to its statistically local-true nature. The buckets have to be carefully sorted and randomized with multiple geolocations, ISPs, and fully-encrypted network protocols - to the very least in order to make this work.

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

#306

Post by drdavid »

dheera wrote: post #190
EastSmith wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you mind if I ask you why it is you believe(d) that to be true? I'm really quite curious. I've seen others claim the same thing, as though it's some sort of law and doctrine.

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

#308

Post by hanspeter »

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.

Well, Google lump search and display ads together themselves. You can run display ads as retargeting campaigns from search ads.

> Search ads get a much smaller lift from personalization.

Search itself has seen huge improvements from personalization. It's hard to imagine that the same shouldn't be the case for the ads shown for a particular query as with the results.

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

#309

Post by yread »

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…

Yeah they should really teach that at school: There are only a few things that are true on food packaging and they are government regulated. The rest is baloney and should be ignored. Oh and for next week prepare an essay on why some still thing small government is a good idea.

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

#310

Post by mackrevinack »

bozzcl wrote: post #162
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aurora store is a thing.

And F-Droid. And there’s plenty of sites to download APKs outside of the Play Store, though I don’t know how reliable they are.

even just extracting the apk's and side loading then is good enough for 95% my use cases. there are show that key you extract, but you would still want something that is trustworthy though. tasker is what I've been using lately and you can automate the process a bit more.

i turned off auto updates in the play store years ago after i got stuck with an app that had some bug in it, where it was working fine before the update. now i only update and app if something is broken or if i really need the new features it offers.

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