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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

#381

Post by dingo_bat »

blub wrote: post #249
dingo_bat wrote: post #182

As I noted on reddit, I am not surprised by this at all. Google's entire incentive to maintain Android is the troves of data they collect about users. Why would they let you turn it off? It doesn't make any sense. If you're surprised as a user, you've been really naïve. Imagine this: would apple ever let you not pay for a new iPhone? Its entire incentive in making iphones is to sell them for money. So it will never a…

I agree with you about Google, but it's more than fine for the people to be surprised and/or outraged. That's how this gets fixed... Google said they're taking steps to fix it. Surely they wouldn't lie to us.

> Surely they wouldn't lie to us.

They kind of lied when they made the location tracking work even when you disable it.

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

#382

Post by murjinsee »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #354
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 Apple has a very strict internal culture of protecting user privacy.

...and yet they comply with ~80% of government requests for user data?

At the end of the day, they still have a way to break their own encryption; they just don't want to set a legal precedent or create tools to allow a third-party to have unfettered access.

Everything they say in public releases is just, "face". It's better than the Facebook or AT&T models of charging for access as a subscription service, but nonetheless I do not believe them when they claim their hardware is opaque to themselves.

Here is a link to their privacy policy: https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-request...

It states that they comply with requests by the government for user data, and informs the user unless gagged.

They received over 5000 NSL's in 6 months last year, which seems kind of dumb if they're not handing over data.

I, for one, do not believe that their "secure enclave" is truly secure, that they have no backdoor.

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

#383

Post by berbec »

Angostura wrote: post #301
dleslie wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is a lifestyle and fashion company moreso than a software or hardware company; yes, Nike makes shoes and Ralph Lauren sells shirts, but they are not best described as shoe or clothing manufacturers first and foremost. Jobs understood this.

if we're going that route, Google is an an advertising company, whose only goal is to harvest your data to maximise advertising revenue.

Yes, that is exactly their goal. Google services, from the Play store to search to Google plus is all designed with exactly this in mind. What most people don't understand is "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. When I use Gmail, I know what I'm signing up for.

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

#384

Post by fulafel »

code_duck wrote: post #353
fulafel wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately iPhones are way too expensive for most people [1]. [1] http://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-househol...

You can get older models for about the same price as cheap Android phones - i'd much rather use a 5 or 5S than anything by Kyocera, for instance. I made the mistake of buying a cheap Andriod phone for $40 when I could have gotten a 4S for 50. The 4S would have had a superior camera, security and even typing performance. Currently I have a iPhone 6 that i got for 200, no contract. Seems pretty affordable to me. In Lib…

Yeah, but this works only as long as only few people want those :)

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

#385

Post by eknkc »

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…

> Do these people not do banking on Windows machines?

They don't.

Almost everyone I know does banking exclusively on their phones. I do that too.

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

#386

Post by bardan »

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…

I finally switched to LineageOS yesterday after hearing this news and it's working fine. It feels great to have a Google-free phone, but I'm shocked by how many Android apps require Google's proprietary services to function these days.

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

#387

Post by Darthy »

jakeogh wrote: post #178
chimeracoder wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Smartphone or not, carrying any phone means providing this information to your carrier at all times. I don't like the idea of sending this information to anybody, but to be honest, Google is the entity that I'm the las…

Only by design. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10985599

Great concept. Why hasn't anybody done this yet?

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

#388

Post by jakeogh »

Darthy wrote: post #387
jakeogh wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only by design. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10985599

Great concept. Why hasn't anybody done this yet?

I'll get to it in my case but really this is on the providers; they designed the protocol backwards. Instead of each customer hacking in a PBX it would be trivial to ping the last known area and then if the phone didn't respond in n (customer configurable) sec send a broader incoming call request ultimately resulting in an all areas ping, or even queue one up like a missed SMS but they would rather monetize your high frequency all-time location data that they pretend to not care about.

Hopping out of "airplane mode" can be made arb fast.

So, short answer, customer demand. I bet eventually they will get too creepy with the data and demand will happen.

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

#389

Post by davohmy »

omnius19 wrote: post #329
davohmy wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A company's incentives are aligned with the people who pay them" That sounds great but it can not be further from the truth. So are you saying that Comcast and the telcos of the world incentives are aligned with their users?

Telcos in the US have localized monopolies. Their customers are a captive audience. The incentive in that situation is for the telcos to wring as much money out of its customers as possible since they have nowhere else to go. Apple is very far from a monopoly. It sells in highly competitive markets and as such, is incentivized to appeal to its customers so that those customers do not choose another option for their h…

Ok, the example still holds where they do not have monopolies but let's move to a better example. Gaming. Highly competitive market.

You buy a game, do you think that it means that the game producer has your best interest at hearth? Apple is filthy rich not because they have users as top priority, but because the extract as much as they can from them. They have a very clear lock-in policy where they try to avoid their users moving to other platforms if they wish so (iMessage anyone). Is that really in their users interest?

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

#390

Post by Accacin »

andrepd wrote: post #306
JonFish85 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." 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 majori…

That's smoke and mirrors. What guarantees you that Apple isn't collecting your location right now ? It's proprietary software, so you wouldn't know, and it's perfectly within the terms of their EULA. You're just gonna trust that they don't (even though they are a business and that can potentially make them more money)? Or are you gonna know your phone isn't spying in you by installing free software on your device?

You've got to do a lot more than installing free software if you're that paranoid. You've got to check the code, ensure the code that you're installing is the same code that you've read, etc. etc.
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