Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Location history data in Google Maps will soon be stored on user devices

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 193 posts

Re: Location history data in Google Maps will soon be stored on user devices

#61

Post by soraminazuki »

ajross wrote: post #53
762236 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't anyone that dislikes you file a lawsuit and subpoena the data too?

Discovery is subject to oversight. The court signs off on the subpoena and your lawyer gets to argue why it's not valid before it does. No, "because I dislike you" isn't going to fly. But if you're in a legitimate feud with someone and they can make a real case that your location information is important evidence for the court to see, sure.

In theory, yes. But we wouldn't even be having this conversation if we had a functioning legal system, government agencies that respected people's rights, and government lawyers that didn't "interpret" constitutional protections out of existence behind closed doors.

Re: Location history data in Google Maps will soon be stored on user devices

#62

Post by xjay »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #24

[flagged]

See also data sent to supl.google.com (Android default).

> SUPL is used as part of the A-GPS (Assisted GPS) system to get a faster Time to First Fix. The problem is that Android's implementation automatically sends the IMSI (ID of the SIM card) to the SUPL provider for no apparent reason. And because Google is the default provider it's a big breach of privacy. [1]

[1] https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Alt-Repo/supl-replacer

Re: Location history data in Google Maps will soon be stored on user devices

#66

Post by b112 »

brainfog wrote: post #46
SoftTalker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have never found myself in and cannot imagine a circumstance where I'd need to know my precise location at a point in time years ago, or really even at any time other than the present.

I suppose this is a bit of a special case but the US and Canadian governments both require you to provide the full list of trips from the last ten years when applying for citizenship and permanent residency. Timeline is incredibly helpful there.

Trips to other countries than where you lived, to be clearer for readers.

The goal is to know if you visited . They almost certainly already know, so it is also about concealment.

Re: Location history data in Google Maps will soon be stored on user devices

#67

Post by londons_explore »

anigbrowl wrote: post #58
oh_sigh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the thing you're looking for isn't something that you recognized as interesting in the moment.

You can turn it off on Android, I did so a few years ago. Although my phone has a perfectly good GPS receiver, Google really dislikes having it turned off and constantly pesters me to turn it back on when using their Map product.

I can kinda see why GPS working would be a core feature of a map product on a mobile device...

Re: Location history data in Google Maps will soon be stored on user devices

#68

Post by londons_explore »

Can they please just encrypt it client side and store it setverside with some key known only to me? For example, encrypt it with a key unlockable with my login password.

All cloudy stuff should operate that way really, to maintain the users privacy expectation which is 'this data is only accessible to me, not my government'.

Re: Location history data in Google Maps will soon be stored on user devices

#69

Post by wolverine876 »

ajross wrote: post #53
762236 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't anyone that dislikes you file a lawsuit and subpoena the data too?

Discovery is subject to oversight. The court signs off on the subpoena and your lawyer gets to argue why it's not valid before it does. No, "because I dislike you" isn't going to fly. But if you're in a legitimate feud with someone and they can make a real case that your location information is important evidence for the court to see, sure.

> your lawyer gets to argue why it's not valid

What if you can't afford a lawyer?

Re: Location history data in Google Maps will soon be stored on user devices

#70

Post by vore »

ffpip wrote: post #44
vore wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Store location history remotely: this is just a scheme to invade privacy and hoover up user data. Store location history locally: this is just a scheme to cut down on storage costs. There's no winning here, is there? Personally, I'm a fan of Google never giving the option to store location history remotely and this is a step in the right direction.

Yes, because they are not promising to not use it for tracking. They are just offloading the storage costs to you.

Do you actually want them to store everywhere you've ever been on their servers because they would be using their storage instead? Because I don't, and I don't care to guess what the actual reason might be, because I'm just glad they don't want to do it anymore because it's better for everyone – removing remote storage removes a whole host of privacy issues.
Post reply on HN