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Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

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Re: Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

#201

Post by skewart »

horsecaptin wrote: post #176
growse wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is true, but it's also potentially worthwhile to consider that Apple has positioned themselves as a hardware company (i.e. the majority of their money is based on selling units of hardware), whereas their main competitor here (Google) is an ad company (i.e. the majority of their money comes from selling their users' data). Apple has chosen to highlight their commitment to privacy partially because they feel it…

"But this is all just marketing, whereas the reality is that Apple could also be hoovering up location data and you may never know." It isn't just marketing. This is how the alignment of incentives works. A company's incentives are aligned with the people who pay them. Apple's are aligned with those that buy phones. Google and Facebook's are aligned with those that buy ads.

> It isn't just marketing.

What makes you so confident? How do you know Apple thinks of itself as a hardware company whose incentives are aligned with those that buy phones? Their marketing certainly has made a lot of people think that, but, well that's just marketing.

Apple hasn't exactly always stuck with one identity. In 2007 one could have easily said that Apple is "a computer company" and not "a phone company" like Nokia.

Ultimately though, Google and Apple are incentivize to collect data for a lot more reasons than just selling ads. A lot of software functionality on phones benefits from rich user data. Apple may well be collecting data to drive better software experiences, and how much of that data they'll keep in-house vs sharing with third-parties is anybody's guess.

Even if you only consider advertising and hardware in simple terms, Apple is very directly incentivize to advertise new iPhones to current iPhone users. They want you to crave new models as soon as they come out, and to think your current model is kind of lame and old. Why wouldn't they be tempted to leverage user data to do that?

Finally, the vast majority of iPhone users probably aren't so sensitive to data security (the market of people who are is pretty small). So I doubt Apple cares that much about their perception among security-conscious people.

Re: Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

#202

Post by giobox »

rightos wrote: post #129
eknkc wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tell all my friends / family to get an iPhone if they are upgrading. I used iOS and Android phones and I like both. However it makes even me nerveous to use a banking application or similar on an Android. Can’t imagine what kind of shit my dad would have running on an Android device with all the fake fishing apps, bloatware, tracking etc going around. With a non jailbroken iPhone I have a lot more peace of mind.

> However it makes even me nerveous to use a banking application or similar on an Android. Can’t imagine what kind of shit my dad would have running on an Android device with all the fake fishing apps, bloatware, tracking etc going around. Do these people not do banking on Windows machines? The malware situation was infinitely worse on Windows - I see an Android device with some unwanted ads maybe once a year from a…

For me anyway, they certainly don't. iOS is the only computer platform my parents have ever been able to use well, and for that they adore it. Anecdotally I've heard similar from many friends.

Re: Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

#203

Post by londons_explore »

sarcasmic wrote: post #32

When I'm at work, I use my work computer, which has a long lived static IP, to log into my personal Google account. I have configured all of my browsers to clear cookies and storage upon closing. I never use signed-in Google Maps, but I sometimes use it from that computer, from fresh browser while logged out. A week ago, I moved from my previous home that was close to my work, to a different city about 20 miles away.…

When signed out, Google maps' initial view is entirely based on IP address. Sure, they could use cookies, but they don't. They could also use device profiling, but they don't.

The IP -> location mapping is googles secret sauce, but it collects data from a lot of places, and is for most users very accurate. We're talking street level accuracy in many cases. The data you or another user feeds into it you could easily get back as your reported location, especially if you were trying to fool it.

Your phone doing a wifi scan for nearby access points to determine it's own location, then doing a google search could easily mark your whole home external IP as being in that place (after a few hours), which would then affect non-signed in google services from other devices in your home.

There are cases it's very bad too though, especially VPN's and frequently-shifting dynamic IP's.

Re: Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

#204

Post by londons_explore »

mattrices wrote: post #49
sarcasmic wrote: post #32

When I'm at work, I use my work computer, which has a long lived static IP, to log into my personal Google account. I have configured all of my browsers to clear cookies and storage upon closing. I never use signed-in Google Maps, but I sometimes use it from that computer, from fresh browser while logged out. A week ago, I moved from my previous home that was close to my work, to a different city about 20 miles away.…

Google can use user prediction to guess which account you are with your browser, ip, ism, mac address, and other persistant metadata. Its how their whole 'you signed in from a new location' security scheme works.

'you signed in from a new location' uses a cookie that remains after signout.

Clear cookies, and you'll see it again.

In Chrome, it also uses the TLS Client Channel ID, which is a persistent unique identifier established between a browser and a server which (on capable platforms) is derived from a key stored in a hardware security module, making it hard to steal. Ie. if you clone the hard drive of a computer, when you use the clone, Google will know you are a suspicious person, even though you have all the right cookies.

Re: Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

#205

Post by prawn »

lemagedurage wrote: post #120
IBM wrote: post #63

It's amazing to me how many comments here excuse Google's behavior by offering the impractical "solution" of just not using a smartphone (a false dilemma) when the obvious answer is to get an iPhone. That's the advice of pretty much everyone in the infosec field and I'm sure some of them will attest to that in this thread.

Apple provides a black box with iOS, they have full control. Maybe the next iOS update comes with privacy intrusion because it's more lucrative. A more sensible way of dealing wirh the issue would be to use an open source Android version like AOSP or LineageOS, not run proprietary gapps, and replace its functionality with F-Droid, MicroG and Yalp-store. Your location will stay out of Apple's/Google's hands and you ca…

"Maybe the next iOS update comes with privacy intrusion because it's more lucrative."

Isn't it likely to be more lucrative now? I imagine that the number of people choosing iOS over Android purely for security/privacy reasons is fairly low. I think the incentive exists for them now and they've ignored it.

Re: Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

#206

Post by aoeusnth1 »

sjwright wrote: post #199
slaman wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent argument is that without transparency it's difficult to actually know. Apple's true incentive is to provide value for their shareholders. If they can improve the value provided to shareholders by hoovering up information while also maintaining consumer confidence and sales then why would they not? I think that Apple's incentives are better aligned with my desires for privacy, but it's only an assumption.

> why would they not? Because this sort of thing inevitably leaks? Apple has a formula that demonstrably works, a formula that everyone can directly observe making them an utterly stupid amount of money. It would be the height of stupidity to risk their unparalleled monetary successes to pursue a few dirty little crumbs.

Exactly - especially when you are employing privacy-conscious developers, it would be nearly impossible to keep it contained. Someone would leak it to the EFF. It's better business strategy for Apple to not defect.

Re: Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

#207

Post by mikeash »

amartya916 wrote: post #127
mikeash wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other strategies for getting a lock faster. Most of the slowness for a cold start with a modern receiver is receiving the ephemeris data (i.e. where the satellites are at the moment), which is transmitted at a whopping 50 bits per second, and so takes about 30 seconds to receive. Once you have that, the rest comes quickly. Older receivers with less computational power and less clever techniques could take a…

Thank you (& kop316 for the parent comment) for taking the time to jot this down. It made for a fascinating read for someone like me who is ignorant about how these networks/connections work. Given Android's popularity/prevalence, do you think that for "coarse" location awareness, using Wi-FI Direct + Bluetooth for a local mesh with other Android devices is a possibility (basically, if one of the devices in the mesh…

Technologically I don't see why that couldn't be done. Transmit known coordinates, do a rough estimate of your distance using signal strength, and add that to the position error. If you get lat/lon from another device and it looks like that device is 300ft away, then your position is lat/lon ± 300ft.

It could be tricky to do securely. How do you prevent a malicious device from spoofing bad location data?

Android and iOS do something sort of like this already, determining position by looking WiFi base stations with known locations and attempting to do some triangulation. This can speed up a fix if the GPS signal is having trouble, and can be essential for indoor location because GPS signals don't penetrate structures well at all. My understanding is that the database gets built up by the devices. When they have a good location fix, they'll report back on the WiFi base stations they see, so that the mothership can build a database of where the things are. This is a little bit like what you describe, but with a really roundabout data path.

Re: Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

#208

Post by gokvokbok »

Argh shit. Google feel like a cancer on my phone now, it'll be the shove I needed to try out whatever the open source one is now, Cynagon's successor.

Whenever a company goes public, it turns into a shiteating, environment-killing, public-interest-killing monolith. Or is that just some of them?

Re: Google collects cell tower info even if location services are disabled

#210

Post by cmurf »

I'm moving up my research on migrating to Nextcloud, or some combination of it and maybe FastMail. I'm sick of this kind of bullshit.

And the thing is, Google, Apple, Microsoft, are less still evil than Time Warner, Verizon, Road Runner, Xfinity, etc. But I'm concerned they are not sufficiently opposed to that fiefdom to maintain a neutral balance on the internet.

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