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Android recording all your moments on Google Map

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Re: Android recording all your moments on Google Map

#22
post #6

Found a bug! I travelled a few miles away from home yesterday and it's recorded as superfast visits between home and various parts of the journey in a star shape. The Android tablet that I left at home is confusing Google into recording some weird split journey where I am both at home and travelling...

huh.. now I understand why my travel pattern is star shaped too... position is reported from both from phone and tablet...

Re: Android recording all your moments on Google Map

#23

Doesn't this constant use of GPS drain the battery? On every Android-based smartphone I've had ( two! ) I've only enabled GPS and network-derived location when I need to navigate, otherwise the phone shuts-off in a few hours.

I believe it keeps GPS positioning to a minimum, relying primarily on network-derived location data. At least judging by the granularity (or lack of) the route data, which causes my commute to work to look most confusing.

Secondly, and this in my opinion is a bug in their algorithm, when I'm at home it frequently switches to my home location and a location about 10 miles away. The only reason I can see for it to do this is it's predicting my location based on my cell site location (phones know which tower they're connected to, Google must know where all these towers are). And my normal cell tower is 5 miles away (right in the middle of my two "locations"), so clearly the algorithm has determined I'm 5 miles away from a cell tower, but can't make up it's mind in which direction. It needs tweaking to remove data points when I suddenly cover 10 miles in a second, over and over.

Re: Android recording all your moments on Google Map

#26

Of course it is, because I opted in when it asked if I wanted to be tracked. Google also sends me an email once a month to remind me I chose to be tracked.

How do they think Google Now and all those other lovely services work? New news? I think not, move along.

Re: Android recording all your moments on Google Map

#27

Doesn't this constant use of GPS drain the battery? On every Android-based smartphone I've had ( two! ) I've only enabled GPS and network-derived location when I need to navigate, otherwise the phone shuts-off in a few hours.

I believe it keeps GPS positioning to a minimum, relying primarily on network-derived location data. At least judging by the granularity (or lack of) the route data, which causes my commute to work to look most confusing. Secondly, and this in my opinion is a bug in their algorithm, when I'm at home it frequently switches to my home location and a location about 10 miles away. The only reason I can see for it to do t…

Do you have another device at home?

Re: Android recording all your moments on Google Map

#29

for some people like me this is a feature and not an issue. You get to choose if you want to be tracked or not so its up to you.

For 99.9% of people it's a great feature and not an issue. For the remaining 0.01% it's a karma-harvesting device because everything Google/privacy related is sure to draw clicks. Hence the infinitude of tabloid-ish articles in all the tech websites and blogs in the past months.

Re: Android recording all your moments on Google Map

#30
post #6

Found a bug! I travelled a few miles away from home yesterday and it's recorded as superfast visits between home and various parts of the journey in a star shape. The Android tablet that I left at home is confusing Google into recording some weird split journey where I am both at home and travelling...

Yes, I had that problem too :-) You really should disable tracking on stationary devices like tablets that are mostly at home. Your phone probably represents your location faithfully.
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