You could turn off location tracking on your phone. Yes, it makes life a bit more inconvenient, but it lowers the creep factor significantly.
Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
61–70 of 399 posts
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#62The primary reason I have an iPhone is that I want to reach friends who use Google Hangouts without having literally my entire device be logged in as my Google account. I used to solve this by having an Android with a dedicated account, and logging the Hangouts app into my normal Google account, but that stopped working a couple of Android versions ago.
And now you have a full device logged into an iCloud account. Which Apple is pushing even more obnoxiously (and keeps pestering me about it on both iPad and Mac after each update). What did you gain?
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#63Just turn off location services on the phone unless you really need them.
Turn it off in your Google account, not your phone (unless that's what you meant).
I turned it off years ago and when I read an article that says "click on this link to see how google tracks you!" I see nothing.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#64The idea that you'd have any location privacy while carrying around a cell phone is absurd. Both iPhone and Android devices record location history, and your network provider always has a rough guess of where you are. It may be annoying that Google is very persistent about trying to build its maps dataset, but the suggestion that it's not happening on other devices is crazy.
There's a huge and meaningful distinction about the technical ability to violate your privacy, and actually doing so, and trust (slash non-creepiness) is largely about not doing so when you could. For instance, the fact that my roommate can open my bedroom door at any time does not mean that I have no privacy when making phone calls in my room; it means that I have privacy because I trust my roommate not to do so, except perhaps in an emergency. A roommate who randomly opens my door and comments on my conversations would be a creepy roommate.
iPhone gives you lots of controls around location history, and certainly there is nothing in the iPhone ecosystem where they want you to contribute reviews or human analysis to help them with gathering data. I trust that these controls work. My cell phone provider knows where I am to route calls, but I trust that they aren't also keeping the data for fun / marketing / etc.
The suggestion that it couldn't happen on other devices is certainly at odds with technical capabilities; the suggestion that it isn't happening is a different one entirely, and is not crazy.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#65I'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…
Also, if they were behind a configuration option and defaulted to on, most people would be fine turning it off and forgetting about it.
This seems to be about lack of control. It's good for developers to think carefully before they ship products that do things with no way of being told not to.
EDIT: Welp. Apparently these settings exist.
I don't understand the point of the blog post then. Why is it so upsetting, if you have the ability to turn it off?
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#66What are these "Google" notifications? Is that a "Google" app generating them? If so, can't it be disabled or uninstalled? I don't have this on my Android phone but I've uninstalled or disabled everything Google related. And if you don't want to be tracked, you can also switch off Location History.
I don't get any of this on Android either, because I have almost all Google stuff turned off and replaced with F-Droid and open source. No Google Play Store, no Google Location Services, no Google Maps (ZaNavi instead), no Keep, no Photos, no Registration, no YouTube app. No Gmail (I use a Sonic.net IMAP server shared by all my computers, and K-9 mail), no Google account. Some of those apps bitch when you disable them that something will break, but all that breaks is Google intrusiveness.
Android without Google works quite well. Better than with Google.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
My mobile carrier is a local server hoster that also happens to operate a fiber and DSL network in the city, and a small 3G network. They don’t track – I’ve talked with them, personally. And in the future, with the Librem phones, we’ll also be able to ensure there is no tracking on the device side.
Hmm, they don't intentionally track or keep tracking data, but for cell phones to work the network _has_ to know what tower you are next to (or really what 'cell' you are in, why it's called a 'cellular phone'), to deliver a phone call or txt to you. What happens if they get a law enforcement request with warrant/subpoena? I bet the data is there to be delivered. If they aren't _very_ intentional about scrubbing it,…
I see a huge difference between "will violate my privacy if served with a valid subpoena" and "will violate my privacy to make money on a daily basis".
(And, for what it's worth, Apple has fought against a valid subpoena for iPhone data that they did technically have the capability of answering.)
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#68What are these "Google" notifications? Is that a "Google" app generating them? If so, can't it be disabled or uninstalled? I don't have this on my Android phone but I've uninstalled or disabled everything Google related. And if you don't want to be tracked, you can also switch off Location History.
I have Location History on (it's complicated to justify it in my own head, but I find the feature useful, and it's not like my phone company and Google don't know my location - at least this way I get some benefit from it). I have basically every other "history" item disabled on my Google account. I constantly encounter new features that I'm interested in using, but for whatever reason they require me to enable App and Web Usage History (or something like that) for my Google account, so I decline, as I don't want to open that can of worms.
The specific feature in question here is part of Google Maps and can be disabled in the preferences pane of that app. For one of various reasons I could speculate this particular setting doesn't persist across devices, so if I get a new device (or, sometimes after an OS update) I will have to go back and disable it again. It makes me angry every time.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#69I'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…
Also, if they were behind a configuration option and defaulted to on, most people would be fine turning it off and forgetting about it. This seems to be about lack of control. It's good for developers to think carefully before they ship products that do things with no way of being told not to. EDIT: Welp. Apparently these settings exist. I don't understand the point of the blog post then. Why is it so upsetting, if y…
I believe that is the current state of affairs. Notifications can be suppressed in Android apps, right?
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#70There are things you can do to help fight this. Donate some time or money to the Ubuntu Phone project. It isn't maintained by canonical anymore, but it is far from dead. More choices and options are what we need now. It is insane that there are basically two OS you can do.