From time to time I visit https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and every time I need to turn something off again.
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Google tracks users who turn off location history
61–70 of 108 posts
Re: Google tracks users who turn off location history
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are all features that people expect to work regardless of what they do with their settings... Why would you want a weather update for somewhere you aren't? If you search drug store should it tell you about the concept of drug stores or the actual drug stores that are down the street? There would be tons of people upset that Google is broken if it didn't take location into account for search.
For weather, I use 2 mechanisms: a. I setup IPhone weather app to my home town location. Works 95% of the time, I'm not traveling that much. b. Search for " weather" when I'm traveling. Browser autocomplete makes this trivial. Fairly easy and doesn't feed Google with a stream of personalized location information. === A day in the life of a BigAdCo surveillance apologist: 1. Claim it's obviously easy to disable the tr…
Yes, you can manually set cities, but the article cites automatic weather updates. That's the part that requires your location. Knowing where you are is the only way this feature can work. You don't need to use it and if you're happy with "browser autocomplete" vs a widget that shows the current weather then by all means use the browser.
Re: Google tracks users who turn off location history
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Suggestions are welcome for good alternatives, I'm in the move away myself. Here's some services I've started using, in many areas I'm still looking for other replacements. Hopefully others can help. 1. E-Mail : protonmail.com, I really like this one, great service. 2. Video Calls : I'm currently using signal to some extent, not very happy though, would really like something like Hangouts. 3. Browser : Firefox 4. P…
> 5. Things I'm still looking for : Google Calender, Drive Fastmail provides a DavCAL calendar and some storage space with their email offering. They also have a wonderful browser client (much better that gmail at least for me).
+1, I recommend FastMail's web client too if you like to manage your email and calendar using a browser. It's fast and snappy, has a clean interface (they have a couple of themes you can choose from), and it's pretty lightweight (for example, a gmail tab uses 195 MB for me while Fastmail's uses 51 MB).
Re: Google tracks users who turn off location history
#64From time to time I visit https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and every time I need to turn something off again.
Here's a subset of what Google knows about you to tailor ads for you: https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated
Re: Google tracks users who turn off location history
#65To add one datum, I turned off location history thinking that meant that Google would use my _current_ location for Maps, Search etc while not storing my _past_ locations. Their interface and messaging did not succeed in dissuading me from this belief, despite the fact that I was explicitly looking for messaging and settings related to protecting my privacy. Was I naive to believe this was even possible in the first…
https://microg.org/ is a FLOSS replacement for Google Play Services that can be used with AOSP for a (mostly) Google-free Android experience.
Re: Google tracks users who turn off location history
#66To add one datum, I turned off location history thinking that meant that Google would use my _current_ location for Maps, Search etc while not storing my _past_ locations. Their interface and messaging did not succeed in dissuading me from this belief, despite the fact that I was explicitly looking for messaging and settings related to protecting my privacy. Was I naive to believe this was even possible in the first…
I’d recommend taking a look at https://www.privacytools.io . It has quite a few recommendations for different services that respect your privacy, many of which are FOSS. For e-mail, calendars, and contacts I’ve migrated over to FastMail. In my opinion the web client and help articles are far superior to Google’s offerings. You can even use your own domain along with 100+ aliases. For cloud storage I have migrated fro…
A potential alternative to Google translate is deepl. It doesn't do website translation like Google translate does in Chrome but I've found it to be better for texts in English, French and German.
Re: Google tracks users who turn off location history
#67Federalize search.
Re: Google tracks users who turn off location history
#68From time to time I visit https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and every time I need to turn something off again.
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Re: Google tracks users who turn off location history
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
The _title_ of the article says "Google tracks users who turn off location history", and the article further develops the claim. Yes, Google offers the option to "turn off Location History". No, turning off Location History doesn't stop Google from tracking your location by other means. Google engages in physical world surveillance against the express instructions of its users, misleading them in the process. Not coo…
This is just dumb. Location History has nothing to do with other apps that can track your location. All of this is made clear in the UI which makes it abundantly clear what is happening. Google makes no attempt to hide what is happening and if you enable Location History Google will actually spam you with email warnings that you have Location History turned on. So it's yet another anti-tech non-story clickbait. But t…
> Google makes no attempt to hide what is happening and if you enable Location History Google will actually spam you with email warnings that you have Location History turned on.
I had the web and app activity turned off, never received this email.
Re: Google tracks users who turn off location history
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are all features that people expect to work regardless of what they do with their settings... Why would you want a weather update for somewhere you aren't? If you search drug store should it tell you about the concept of drug stores or the actual drug stores that are down the street? There would be tons of people upset that Google is broken if it didn't take location into account for search.
taking current location into account !== building a cumulative location profile over time without explicit consent
Should it geotag your photo with your current location, assuming you have that feature enabled in the camera app?
Should it use your location to contextualize your query for "pizza near me?" If so, does that mean your browsing history has to be redacted so that it isn't possible later to infer your location from your selection of a candidate restaurant?
I think different people will have different opinions about what constitutes a "cumulative location profile." Google's definition makes intuitive sense to me personally but I can see how there might be other points of view on it.
I can understand the public outrage, but on HN it surprises me that almost everyone seems to think this is a clear case of pure evil.