Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch • Hacker News Board

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#391

Post by someguydave » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:30 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #322

geofft wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They registered with the nearest cell towers, and ask them to watch signal strength so they can make handover work. This is coarse location information (since the company that runs the cell towers knows where their own cell towers, and uses your current tower registration to figure out which cell tower to send a call to), and can be made a little more fine-grained if you use signal strength from the various towers an…

And that's fine, but none of this addresses the assertion that cellphones can't work without GPS tracking.

Not GPS tracking. Simply tracking the fact that you transmitted a signal to a particular cell tower (the one nearby in radio terms) is sufficient to narrow your location considerably.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#392

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:32 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #382

khedoros1 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPS tracking is a complete red herring; you're focusing on the wrong thing. No one ever claimed that GPS was necessary. Here's the statement that was made: "Your cell phone cannot function without actually knowing where you are (to some approximation)". That "approximation" is: "Which cell towers can hear your phone transmit, and how strong is the signal?" Your cell phone would work just as well as a phone if you dis…

No one ever claimed that GPS was necessary The context of this thread is Android and Apple's tracking of location history and I'm just trying to stay on topic. Not without downvotes, natch. This isn't Reddit, I'm not an idiot, and I know how cellphones work. Try to be more charitable.

[deleted]

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#393

Post by rspeer » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #381

rspeer wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you sign up for Local Guides. I did out of curiosity after I answered a few questions, and sincerely regretted it. The notifications and junk e-mail were never-ending until I blocked them all. And my time is not worth that little.

You don't have to subscribe to the emails to get the benefits. The notifications are the same as when you're not a local guide. I also signed up to get the benefits.

I'm pretty sure you do have to subscribe to the e-mails.

You may not have to stay subscribed, but that's true in a sense for most junk mail.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#394

Post by someguydave » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #103

someguydave wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your cell phone cannot function without actually knowing where you are (to some approximation) at all times. This information is known to the phone company, at the very least. The phone company almost always records and retains that information. Similarly, you cannot communicate to anyone on the internet without using an IP address, which your counterparty must know and nearly always retains.

I think that's what I said - I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me?

I am skeptical that your phone provider will hold the extensive information they have on your location in confidence. I'm even more skeptical that the recipients of your IP packets will also hold whatever location information they can infer in confidence.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#395

Post by Too » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 9:22 AM UTC

modzu wrote: post #268

It's not so much the privacy that bugs be about this -- its the cognitive intrusion ; my phone vibrating for my attention only to look at it and see this bullshit. Ick.

Agree, this is the biggest issue. I get slightly annoyed by this but what's worse is for old and non tech people. Has anyone at google studied for even 2 minutes how non tech people use a phone? My grandma panics every time there is a notification that is not a SMS or a phone call. I opened her phone and there was som many unread crap-notifications that you couldn't even find the ones that were from her real friends. I get questions like how can i see if i have any unread text messages, which is an instant proof that the UI is wrong.

Also the phrasing of these notifications make you think they were designed by someone from Ryanair. "Add your photo to google maps" the instant you take a photo could easily be confused with "Save this photo" for someone who doesn't understand tech.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#396

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

saulrh wrote: post #42

I'm going to be completely honest here: If these things were behind a configuration option and defaulted to off, I'd have gone into my phone and turned that option on. I want to leave reviews for restaurants as I'm walking out of them - it serves the common good and doing it immediately is better for memory. I want to remember to download offline maps when I'm about to go somewhere where I won't have coverage. My mem…

And I completely understand, if it's opt-in. I might even do the same (or maybe just for a while). But soon as it's opt-out, it becomes creepy as hell and every time I get a message like this I resent Google a little bit more.

Similarly, recently I clicked to like a YouTube video while I wasn't logged in (I only ever log in to Google using a private tab since a few years because I'm just so fed up with the incessant nagging me to track and spy me).

So I forgot that I wasn't logged in and clicked the like/heart button. You know what it said to me?

"Sign in to make your opinion count."

Yeea, that wasn't accidentally worded badly. It's just too much of this shit every day all day, I no longer believe they actually meant to say "Sign in so that we can count your opinion". No, this passive-aggressive bullshit permeates every pop-up and nag screen Google ever communicates to me and the message is pretty clear. The subtext of my opinion being worthless unless I allow myself to be tracked.

Same passive-aggressive shit goes on in Google Maps. Of course I have Location History turned off. Don't want to be tracked? We won't remember your recent search queries either. Because obviously they can only do that in the cloud or something. I remember back in the day when search fields that would remember recent queries first appeared, we used to call that "intelligent". Yeah it's a bit of a low bar for intelligence, but guess what the world's leading AI company can't do it unless you allow them to track your physical location. Can't? More like "won't".

They want to sell me as data, but every step along the way, they try and make me feel like an insignificant little insect. It's not an actual transaction like "I give you data, you give me 'free' service", you can't negotiate really, and if you dare to even try they will basically bully you.

If, like some people try to argue, we are really "paying" for Google's services with our attention and/or private tracking data--it's more like emotional extortion / blackmail, than it's a business transaction.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#397

Post by nikki93 » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

It’s interesting how we use individual-inspired predicates when refering to the complex identity “Google” in this thread — “Google wants ...” “Google should ...” —- would Google get mad at you and stop talking to you when you do something bad? I guess it would.

Who is Google? The alignment of the agency, benefit, desires, ... seems to lie among various “actual” humans, it’s a distributed system across human identities much like its actual software is distributed across servers.

I keep wondering whether interacting with it while assuming it to be motivated in similar ways that individuals would be is a sensible approach in general, and how we have constructed it to be so given our incentive and preference systems (buying products, paying for services, etc.) It’s very much a mirror of the human self: self centered, attached to its ego.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#398

Post by GCU-Empiricist » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

niklasrde wrote: post #28

doktrin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't owned an iPhone in over 5 years, and I feel the same way. No company should be romanticized, and I'm sure Apple's (very public) decision to take user privacy seriously can be viewed cynically - but at the end of the day that's the kind of stuff I care about as a consumer, and will choose my next phone accordingly.

As an N.B. - developing and using for iPhone/iPad, hell even Apple TV has become so much nicer in the past 5 years. I can't remember the last time I've used DFU mode. Signing Certs are still annoying in XCode, but day-to-day it's a lot better than what it once was.

Do you still need an up to date mac to do it (even a hackentosh) or can you develop from outside their environment?

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#399

Post by jonathanyc » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

khedoros1 wrote: post #346

jonathanyc wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I tried to turn the creepy Google Maps prompts off but could not. Why should these be opt-out —- should others be tricked into sacrificing their privacy for your convenience?

I found them buried in some menus that I didn't see last time I tried to opt out. Settings->Notifications->Your Contributions. There were about a dozen things that I decided to turn off, in addition to my previous choices regarding deletion of my location history, home address, etc.

Neat, thanks. Wow, I didn’t think to look in “Notifications”—-was looking for things labeled “Location Settings” or things like that. “Your Contributions” is a very dystopian name :)