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Comment by cdnsteve | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad to see this data provided back to me, however, I'm very concerned about Google knowing absolutely everything I do while on the web and on my Android device.

- Used Messenger app, sent X messages

- Used maps, with location data, search data

- Use phone, with number of calls

- Used (Any installed app) included how often and what I did.

I've since turned everything off.

While browsing on my phone last night I saw a new Google.com feature where they were using my email address to try sign me up to email lists at the top of search results.... Not cool.

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It's even worse due to all the dark patterns Google adds. For example Maps will refuse to locally store your previous searches if you don't let google keep your location history, making the use of application extremely frustrating.

Trying to use Google Fit, Now, etc. will keep popping up requests to let Google constantly track your location and web searches with o clear way to disable those annoyances. And more and more.

Most frustrating to me is the "high accuracy" location service. No, I do not want you to track what wireless SSIDs I'm near. Accurate within 25 feet, as GPS usually is for me, is just fine.

Is this still an issue? I don't remember Google asking me to do this for a long time now.

As far as I know, they've just mudded up the language, so it's not obvious that you check "Yes, please report all my friends and associates wlan ids/location and store them in one huge database that's available to Google, law enforcement etc. And once you've clicked yes, I don't think they ask again.

In my (Sony) Marshmallow/Android 6.0 phone it lets one choose: "Location mode": "High accurancy" (Use GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or mobile networks to determine location), "Battery saving" (Wi-fi, bluetooth or mobile networks) and "Device Only" (Use GPS to determine location).

Just now noticed it says "High Accuracy" (I believe Google Maps will nag you into submission on this, if you try to use GPS only).

It does indeed nag you and once you select "high accuracy" it will stay so forever, unless you go to settings and disable it every time. Aargh. Otherwise it just keeps asking until you allow it by mistake.

Don't forget the menu item "Scanning" in Settings > Location. It "improves location" by scanning wifi and bluetooth _anytime_ i.e. even when location is turned off. I like the sneaky location of the menu item (no pun intended).

This is, by far, the most important point. Google could make it very easy for you to use their apps offline, but they don't. The recent searches in Google Maps not being saved offline is especially annoying to me personally, and Google seems to think that it's impossible to store data if you don't send them to Google.

I can see them saying "we didn't want to confuse customers who thought syncing was broken when they didn't see their searches in other phones", but given how easy it is to tell the user "you have disabled sync", I don't think there's any excuse for Google to behave like this.

To me it seems most likely they have a syncing framework/library that takes care of both the local storage of recent items, forwarding those to the google cloud services, and retrieving them when necessary. And when you disable the cloud services, this framework becomes inactive.

Of course, you could say the design of the framework is hostile, or that they should fall back to something else, but I can see this being considered extra unnecessary work.

To me it seems obvious that adding these sync features was the original "extra unnecessary work". It is a dark pattern that Google is obviously engaging in to the detriment of their users. They went the extra mile to annoy their users to gather some more data.

Personally I think the syncing between devices is very convenient.

Yes, which is great. But note that they require Location history for it! So to get saved (and synced) previous searches you need to let your phone upload your location constantly to Google.

To me, the tipping point was years ago when they changed the logout screen. Now instead of logging out with one click, you "log out" but the next time you come back to Google your profile is automatically selected, waiting for your password. You have to click "sign in with a different account", then click on the X to actually remove your profile from being tied to your browser.

Anyway, it was so satisfying to log in and see absolutely nothing, no activities whatsoever.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8638157

Just use Here Maps w/o an account. Screw Goolgle. Even if the different service providers track you the data is at least scattered among them, not in the hands of a single Big Evil Corporation Inc.

Alternatively, use something which just doesn't track you at all:

https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=osmand%7E&fd...

I uninstalled the Gmail iPad app because suddenly YouTube and the Google maps apps on the iPad suddenly knew who I was, even though I'd never logged into them. It turned out that all Google apps can access the same iOS keychain.

The iPad is a family device. The children watch kids stuff on YouTube. My wife and I both use Google maps for different things. I was the only one using Gmail.

So, no I don't want personalised YouTube tracking on the iPad. Every time i opened the maps app it drove me to login. The iPad is a shared device. Maps and YouTube logins on a shared device make little sense, especially when Google is building profiles from our usage.

I found it a pity that my only choice was to delete the Gmail app, in order to stop the nagging. So irritating!

TBH I'd blame Apple for that more than Google. Apple desperately needs to modernize iOS to match the reality that tablets (and even phones, for many people) are multi user devices.

This is one thing that Google seemingly has never understood: A single device doesn't represent a single person. Even when it does, it doesn't represent a single usage scenario or persona.

Your family iPad is a perfect example. Another is the way I have personal emails and work emails both on my phone - but that doesn't mean I want to merge them all into one super-inbox and treat them all the same.

> - Use phone, with number of calls

Oh well, they also store the phone numbers that you called along with the duration. And possibly more data than your mobile service provider manages to store.

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