Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings • Hacker News Board

Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings

#81

Post by freeAgent » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 9:48 AM UTC

typenil wrote: post #58

These dark patterns around location tracking was what finally made me give up on Android. I knew Google tracked location even when the location setting was turned off, so I had App & Web activity disabled. As Google bricked more and more functionality to dis-incentivize disabling that setting, they dis-incentivized me right off the Android platform and off of the rest of their services. They did me a favor, really. I…

Same here. By totally borking the user experience when one attempts to disable location tracking, they just encouraged me to stop using their services. I switched to iOS for mobile devices and now I don’t even use Google Maps on mobile. Apple Maps is good enough. Now Google have no idea where I am when I leave my house, and that’s a good feeling.

Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings

#82

Post by PeterStuer » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 12:05 PM UTC

pfundstein wrote: post #74

inetknght wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is fixing this in iOS 14. It allows you to give an app access to only approximate location. I would rather have the ability give a custom location instead.

1. Download a GPS spoofing app 2. Enable Developer options 3. Select mock location app 4. Spoof your location

Get banned on all location based AR games, of course.

Is this even still possible on current iOS/Android devices?

Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings

#83

Post by conception » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #37

FalconSensei wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and then you live in London, ON - Canada, and search for Best places to eat in London... Or you live in the US city of Vancouver instead of Canada and try the same thing...

If only there were some way other than GPS to distinguish between Portland, OR and Portland, ME...

And if only cities had subdivisions of /neighboring/ areas.

Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings

#84

Post by betterunix2 » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

freeAgent wrote: post #80

betterunix2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because most users will want low latency more than they want a hard-to-geolocate IPv6 address; IOW they will just use the IPv6 addresses their ISP assigns them, which will be easy to geolocate even without the ISP's explicit cooperation. Worse still, because IPv6 promises to eliminate NAT, geolocation will likely become even more precise as user devices will have global addresses that they are not sharing with a…

How can per-device IPv6 addresses alone enable better tracking if they’re long-lived and the device moves physical locations during that time? How would a tracker with only IP address know that the device moved?

A number of ISPs have started using NAT for IPv4 due to the address space crunch, which means that at best those IPv4 addresses can only be used for coarse geolocation. The fact that IPv6 addresses are per-device means that at a minimum you can get household level geolocation for each device (based on the prefix). The fact that addresses are long-lived is not really relevant, since addresses are only long lived with respect to a prefix and prefixes will change when a device moves to a different network (almost always the case with residential service).

Re: Even Google engineers are confused about Google’s privacy settings

#85

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #42

ForHackernews wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe people could just live with having to search: " near " if they want to get geographically relevant results. It doesn't seem that terrible to me.

That's terrible for usability, especially since you're almost always going to want better resolution than "anywhere in or around city X".

[deleted]