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Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

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Re: Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

#81

Post by humanistbot »

lupire wrote: post #52

Google changes the UI language in its first party apps based on IP, which is a much bigger deal than advertisers chosing to send Spanish ads to people who spend time in Spanish language countries.

You can disable this by going to https://www.google.com/preferences and changing "Region Settings" to your home country. The fact that this is so undocumented, not easily accessible from first-party apps, and yet lives at such a simple URL is baffling to me.

Edit: It only works if you stay logged in to your Google account.

Re: Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

#82

Post by kps »

humanistbot wrote: post #81
lupire wrote: post #52

Google changes the UI language in its first party apps based on IP, which is a much bigger deal than advertisers chosing to send Spanish ads to people who spend time in Spanish language countries.

You can disable this by going to https://www.google.com/preferences and changing "Region Settings" to your home country. The fact that this is so undocumented, not easily accessible from first-party apps, and yet lives at such a simple URL is baffling to me. Edit: It only works if you stay logged in to your Google account.

Doesn't help. My ISP covers Ontario and Québec with the same address pools — two different ‘primary’ languages, not to mention two different legal jurisdictions. IP ‘geolocation’ is fundamentally broken.

With Firefox, you can (with some difficulty) specify your location, but most still pull something out of their ass.

Re: Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

#83

Post by runjake »

arthurcolle wrote: post #22
freitasm wrote: post #21

Not you IP address but your router/access point's MAC address and been doing it for many years. For example, I receive quite a few devices for reviews, and I mostly give things away after using those. Many years ago, I gave a friend in another city a router. For a few weeks his computer and other devices reported his location as being my city instead of his. It took a couple of weeks for Google services to catch up.…

How do they get mac address from HTTP requests?

It’s not the MAC address, it’s the BSSID of the wireless network you are connected to, and those around you.

Software typically obtains BSSIDs from your mobile OS’s wi-fi frameworks.

The BSSID looks like a MAC address, and in many but not all cases, a given AP’s wireless network BSSID is within a byte or two of its actual wi-if radio MAC.

Google and Apple maintain their own massive geolocation databases of BSSIDs, signal strength, and latitude/longitude.

Re: Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

#84

Post by moonfern »

dwrodri wrote: post #77
barbazoo wrote: post #64

Genuine question. Does Apple just not do these things? Is my privacy *actually* protected better with an iphone? I still have to use Google Mail for work and occasionally use Google Maps to find things.

Apple does this, but to a lesser extent. I think the important distinction is in the business reasons that Apple and Google collect data. When Google collects data on you, it's mainly so they can let other companies interact with you (ads), and those companies pay Google so that Google makes money. When Apple collects data on you, it's mainly so that Apple can interact with you, and get you to pay Apple so that Apple…

Also to consider: Wifi networks are used for tracking. Google and Microsoft offer methods for disabling this for the network that you control. (_nomap/website) Apple does not. Also Google makes it not impossible to stop tracking ( F-droid/Netguard/Superfreezz) on your phone. Pro iphone: Apple does not share access to an advertising id for monetization without user consent. Apple guards application boundaries.

Re: Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

#85

Post by jacquesm »

eternityforest wrote: post #66
jacquesm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU should add a zero to their fines. That will surely get some attention.

Could Google or anyone else still provide the service they do without tracking? Would it be profitable enough to keep doing it? What would actually happen for users if they added a zero? Would poor people be SOL if they want high quality maps?

Of course they could. But it's an arms race and if one party breaks the pact it would start all over again.

Re: Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

#87

Post by sowbug »

barbazoo wrote: post #64

Genuine question. Does Apple just not do these things? Is my privacy *actually* protected better with an iphone? I still have to use Google Mail for work and occasionally use Google Maps to find things.

Find My Friends exists. Therefore, Apple has access to a pipeline providing real-time location data of your whereabouts, if you use that feature. Apple's privacy policy confirms that they collect "Precise location only to support Find My, and coarse location." Apple complies with law-enforcement subpoena requests about 90% of the time in the US (https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html). For comparison, Google's compliance rate is about the same, at 84% (https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview). I wouldn't expect those rates to be substantially different; they're both US companies subject to US law.

In other words, cops interested in your whereabouts probably don't care much if you have an iOS or Android-based product. Moreover, the easier subpoena target is your wireless carrier. For their service to work, your carrier must map your billing info to your SIM IMEI (I say "must" lazily; I could imagine a ZKP system that gave out certificates showing that a randomized IMEI is paid up. But the angry privacy mob doesn't seem to be focused on carriers right now, so I don't see why they'd change).

According to anecdotes on the web (I am not a customer of Apple), Find My Friends uses IP geolocation as a GPS fallback. It stands to reason that Apple's ad network has built a similar database. I believe both major networks allow individual users to opt out of that database being used to serve them ads, but I don't know whether that means that the ad networks do not still know where that user is.

Re: Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

#88

Post by withinboredom »

AlbertCory wrote: post #24

As other people have said in exhaustive detail: where you are comes from a lot of signals other than your IP address at the VPN end of your VPN. Off the top of my head: you connected to some cell tower in Mexico. Go to google.com/history and clear out all history from all services. Go to YouTube and do the same. Clear everything from your browsers, meaning you have to log in again. If it's allowed, return the phone t…

I’ve tried everything but I can’t stop my google maps from randomly changing to Portugese. I went there for 5 days, years ago. I always change it back to English. It’s so frustrating.

Re: Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

#89

Post by withinboredom »

pmontra wrote: post #3

Are all those devices logged in into your account? Maybe Google thinks you're Mexican because of your recent stay in Mexico and serves you content in Spanish. I'd check the language settings of the search engine, Google News, Android or iOS apps, the content of cookies in the browser, etc.

It won’t matter. I went to Portugal for 5 days once. All my preferences are set to English. I randomly get Portugese results and my maps randomly changes to Portugese. It got worse when they moved it from the maps.google domain. The only way to fix it is to not be logged in.

Re: Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP

#90

Post by withinboredom »

moonfern wrote: post #84
dwrodri wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does this, but to a lesser extent. I think the important distinction is in the business reasons that Apple and Google collect data. When Google collects data on you, it's mainly so they can let other companies interact with you (ads), and those companies pay Google so that Google makes money. When Apple collects data on you, it's mainly so that Apple can interact with you, and get you to pay Apple so that Apple…

Also to consider: Wifi networks are used for tracking. Google and Microsoft offer methods for disabling this for the network that you control. (_nomap/website) Apple does not. Also Google makes it not impossible to stop tracking ( F-droid/Netguard/Superfreezz) on your phone. Pro iphone: Apple does not share access to an advertising id for monetization without user consent. Apple guards application boundaries.

I believe most of it is actually Mozilla, and not either one of those companies. Looking at DNS lookups, 2/3 of all DNS requests on my network go to location.mozilla.com
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