Why does Google Play need constant GPS? | Hacker News Reader

Why does Google Play need constant GPS?

theregister.co.uk

152 pointsdragonbonheur129 comments

FTA: "The same is true of Google Maps. Although it makes far more sense for Maps to have access to your location, the latest build doesn't give you the option of turning it off. To do that, you have to turn off GPS on your phone altogether."

You can, of course, switch off location for google maps on android, and I'm surprised this article wasn't fact-checked for that. Settings->Apps->Maps->Permissions. Same as any other app.

I'm assuming the confusion is because the 'location settings' option in maps settings takes you to the phone's global location settings screen, which does only offer a global toggle. I don't think there's anything nefarious there, it's just that the settings menu isn't terribly well thought out.

disclaimer: googler on maps, but not android maps

edit: The article has been updated and now reads: "Although it makes far more sense for Maps to have access to your location, the latest build doesn't give you a decent option of turning it off. If you do cut off Maps' access to your location, "basic features of your device may no longer function as intended," the operating system warns."

Not that they've bothered to update the rest of the article.

I wonder if disabling "Location services" in Android fully disables it. There is a definite conflict of interest with Google, since they both write the operating system and rely on location data.

To me, the concerning bit of software is not the operating system (which is open source and fairly transparent) but rather Google Play Services, which is a proprietary background service that has nearly complete access to your device. Unfortunately so many applications make use of it that it's hard to ditch. There are open source efforts to replace it [0] but AFAIK nothing ready for consumers.

[0]: http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-micro...

This is what kinda bugs me about Android permissions - they're very binary. Either an app has location permissions or it doesn't. Personally, I would love to be able to say "Google Maps has access to location info while it's in the foreground, but not while in the background."

For that matter, it'd be nice if I could stop certain apps from running in the background at all. A task killer isn't the answer here - a few seconds is enough to gather some data and transmit it, and at that point the damage is done.

On Android there is not actually a meaningful concept of an app "running" vs "not running". Each app is actually a collection of components that are registered to different system hooks ("intents"). Whenever such a hook is triggered, the OS launches the components of all apps that registered for that hook.

What would be interesting IMO were some way to see which app has registered which intents and possibly an option to override those registrations.

I'm not convinced it would be so hard. I imagine something like ForegroundToken's: Activities (now plural with multi-window) in the foreground (onResume) gain access to a ForegroundToken. The service requests require you to pass in the ForegroundToken. This token is then validated at the moment of the request.

When the app goes into the background the system invalidates the token, so any work waiting in queue somewhere will actually fail on the token check when it comes up.

If you want to ask a background service (of your own), or fire off an intent, you pass the ForegroundToken with it. If the work starts while your app is still in the foreground peachy, if not, it fails.

In a foreground > background > foreground cycle, your app gets a new ForegroundToken on every onResume event.

If you want apps to have true background access to a permission, that is a separate toggle (yes more complicated I know, but theoretically possible). They then can pass null into the ForegroundToken argument.

If you're rooted xposed with xprivacy has

1. More finegrained permissions (per api call basically)

2. Ability to give/deny permission per use case or some time.

You assume everyone is on M and later who support this.

Classic living in the bubble.

How is that "living in a bubble"? The last two major versions of the software support the feature. It's nearly a year and a half old.

Classic finding things to be offended about.

Because lets not ignore the fact that more then 50% of devices won't ever see this update, which makes it moot to suggest how to work around something that was taken away. That's classic Google "ship it and fuck the rest" mentality bubble.

Nothing was 'taken away' for pre-M users either, at least Maps-wise.

This article (as originally written, they've updated it since) was stating that a privacy feature that never existed had been taken away. There never was a location services toggle for specifically Maps, and pre-M it's not possible to make one that works (at least, not one that someone who doesn't trust maps with their location should be using).

Where do you get the 50% number from?

These GPS changes started in 4.0.4 (or was it 4.1?) which means 98% of devices (96%) include this:

https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

FTA:

> You can try to deny Google Play access to your handheld's location by opening the Settings app and digging through Apps -> Google Play Store -> Permissions, and flipping the switch on "location."

So it appears the article is talking about M or later.

(my location permission was actually already off for the Play Store, and flipping it on and off again gave no prompt, so not sure what the author was talking about with "but you'll be told you can't at that fine-grain level")

It's difficult to appreciate criticism of older versions and models of things. There isn't a meaningful way Google will be able to address that criticism without updating.

They could just offer a switch to change the behavior in the app itself.

This doesn't seem to be an option for me (Android 5.0.2). Settings->Apps->Maps->Permissions get me a screen that lists the permissions, but there is no way to change them. Am I missing something?

You need Android 6 for this

> Needless to say, this is not making some users very happy. Security researcher Mustafa Al-Bassam reported on Twitter that he "almost had a heart attack" when he walked into a McDonald's and was prompted on his phone to download the fast food restaurant's app.

Apple has iBeacons which can do this, sans GPS. I wonder if this user would be just as upset the prompt wasn't initiated from GPS location tracking?

Personally I think they are cool tech in theory but in practice kind of creepy.

Considering iBeacons can be used for even more precise tracking (though restricted to areas where beacons are around) I very much hope they would.

Really, the only reason it's creepy is because it actualizes the difference between what a user thinks the location services know, and what they actually know. Your phone pretty much always knows roughly where you are, it usually just doesn't brag about it.

At least from a technical standpoint, yes, my phone knows - but it's not necessary that any google apps know or that the information is sent back to any kind of server.

Doesn't brag about it is a bit mild of a way of putting it. I'd phrase it more as "specifically chooses not to educate users that capability is present because everyone in the industry knows it would scare the hell out of normal users."

Well, it can be quite entertaining to show the Google Location History page to people who never heard of it before...

I love introducing people to Google Location History...

I created an gmail for my phone that I never used. My regular google account isn't tied to it.

That's been true for as long as there's been cellular to some extent. It's not hard to triangulate with multiple towers.

Your phone knows your location, of course, but doesn't have to communicate your location to a third party.

Mobile networks track the location of connected devices all the time. That's how they know where to find you if someone calls you or sends you a message.

The problem we have with a lot of modern technology, and particularly communications and payment technologies, is that while some degree of personal identification and association with specific locations or actions is necessary to perform their function, that same information is readily repurposed and easily shared if there are no rules to prevent it, or almost equivalently, if there are no effective sanctions if rules that do exist are breached.

Well said. I would add that while "Mobile networks track the location of connected devices all the time. That's how they know where to find you if someone calls you or sends you a message" this is at the cell level; Google knows what particular store you're in, by using its WiFi database and GPS: much finer grained.

this is at the cell level; Google knows what particular store you're in, by using its WiFi database and GPS: much finer grained.

For a single tower, yes. In practice, if you're within range of multiple cell towers, a little physics and mathematics will determine your location much more precisely, assuming knowledge of each tower's exact location, the relative signal strength received from your device at each tower, and ideally any confounding factors like awkward terrain or local sources of interference.

As an aside, if things are going wrong on the network, it's a fair bet that engineers will be out driving around with directed antennae that will find any given rogue transmitter even using a single receiver given a bit of time. This one's not so much of a privacy concern, though, given that it only tends to be used as necessary to resolve specific problems.

These days it's wise to assume that, if data exists, it's also stored outside of your control somewhere.

As does google: https://developers.google.com/beacons/

My guess the prompt to install an app was a BTLE beacon.

Can beacons trigger a notification without an app listener already installed ? On iOS they can't.

iOS you get a lock screen notification in the bottom-left of the screen I thought.

Looking Android there may be no native notification for beacons, but any app with Bluetooth background access could present the beacons as notifications. I think we would need more details to know exactly how he was promoted. The article is fairly vague on this.

I mostly agree. With my iPhone, I disable wifi and bluetooth when I leave the house (We don't allow cell phone wifi at work, I don't drive very often, and if I'm sticking around somewhere with wifi for a while, I may choose to turn it on there). Unless I forget, of course. A phone a while back had a feature I really want - it would do that automatically (I think it was the phone Phil Zimmerman was involved in). Don't see Apple doing that anytime soon, though.

My feeling is that the businesses and other nosy APs on my way to work and along other corridors I walk can review/keep automated logs of my comings and goings when they establish an API allowing me access to me theirs.

And this is reason #643 for why I've deleted Google Maps, only use Gmail accounts as spam-buckets, use DDG, and generally have mostly cut Google out of my life. I started with an iPhone before Android existed, so I can't say they chased me away, but $%&#, my girlfriend doesn't need to know that much detail about my life; why on earth would I pay good money to send it to Google?

> A phone a while back had a feature I really want - it would do that automatically (I think it was the phone Phil Zimmerman was involved in). Don't see Apple doing that anytime soon, though.

I vaguely recall there being an Android mod or app that allows you to automate all sorts of things, with your feature being an example of what was possible.

On my mac, I use Hammerspoon to do some of this. For example, whenever I connect to a wifi network that isn't my home network, the volume is automatically muted. No more accidental nature videos playing at full volume in a public place!

I do wish I could do something like this with my iPhone. Currently I also turn off wifi manually whenever I leave the house and I feel a bit dirty every time that I travel and I find out that I forgot to do so.

> Apple has iBeacons which can do this, sans GPS. I wonder if this user would be just as upset the prompt wasn't initiated from GPS location tracking?

> Personally I think they are cool tech in theory but in practice kind of creepy.

If it was a beacon, a little message explaining so would go a long way towards making the experience less creepy.

I've found little bits of "unnecessary" why-type explanation go a long way towards increasing user comfort.

I have mixed feelings about it tbh... I actually appreciate some things I see in Google Now, and even the locations I've gone to, asking for reviews, etc... On the flip side it was really weird the first time I ever saw "You must leave in 2 hours to make your flight", because my ticket receipt came into my gmail, and google now does quite a bit to tether email stuff to notifications, they seem to have ical files in email integrated now.

Could this just have been the Physical Web stuff?

Apple's iBeacons only work after you install the app. The beacon IDs are mapped to a specific app and other apps can't see them. You would have to have the McDonalds app installed for McDonalds to be able to ping you when you walk in the store.

A bit off topic, but I also almost had a heart attack recently when I got a notification identifying a product that I had recently taken a picture of. I have Google Goggles installed (it does this), but I had taken this picture with the normal camera app. A recent update sends all the user's pictures to the Goggles service. That means that any picture you take with the phone is sent to Google's servers for analysis, unless you know it's happening and figure out how to turn it off. (I was also impressed, as this was an obscure product: a bottle of fermented rice drink from Korea.)

I expect the location requirement is coming to Google from the media companies. As lots of media is licensed for a particular market, and there are a number of easy VPN solutions that can disguise your IP (and your nominal location) the only way to be "sure" of where you are is to ask the GPS unit. This allows Google Play to do "region coding" and for apps to call a standard API to enforce their own region coding requirements (say netflix or other streaming services).

Wifi gives pretty good location data, and most Mcdonalds provide wifi.

By default, Android 5 lollipop constantly scans wifi (draining battery), and the toggle-off is hidden in some menus.

If it's Wifi, all McDonald's has to do is buy targeted ads against web traffic coming from the IPs of its Wifi routers.

The McDonalds prompting sounds more like a use of the Nearby Notifications API in Play Services ( https://developers.google.com/nearby/notifications/overview ) than simply due to location monitoring. I can't say for sure, though.

"almost had a heart attack"

Did he figure out if it the Google location tracking or the McDonald's food?

It's weird that the writer is suggesting it's mysterious why Google Play would even need access to GPS, when at least one reason is obvious from the example in the article itself: to prompt people to download certain apps when they enter various locations.

There is no way to tell the Google Play Store where your stores are in the developer console. This is just a beacon, and the security researcher confused Google Play Services with Google Play Store.

Relevant:

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackberry/comments/3s26ym/priv_own...

Google Play Services probably does it so that all Android in-app ads can use the location as well through it.

I doubt this is very legal in the EU, as the user hasn't given "explicit consent" for this. It might be worth mentioning it to @vestager on Twitter, who's already been lining up official antitrust charges against Google.

So that is basically an end run around blocking location services on an individual app basis?

No, apps need the location permission to use Play location services.

I wonder if there's a more sinister reason for this than simply, "we want more data for ads." It always freaks me out that Google asks me to review places where I eat, drink, and hang out.

The sinister reason for this is that Google wants better data about places (so the service is more useful, so more people use it, so more ads are served, and so on).

I see the location icon every time I launch the Google Play Store app and sometimes when unlocking the phone for reasons unknown. Nearby is disabled (which still leaves the Nearby Google Play Services (GPS) service running sometimes).

Google Play Services are a trojan horse and a mobile device battery murderer. It takes away the power over your device. Have issues with it? Tough luck, if you'll downgrade, it'll be updated back automatically.

I want Android before 2012 back and not this proprietary fuckup.

Don't be evil. Well that's been thrown out the window...

Come on - evil? It's not like they're selling your location history to kidnapping gangs. It's just advertising - it helps keep the economy churning.

Yes, evil. It also keeps some folks' stomachs churning.

There is a certain segment of society who knows exactly what's being done with this massive surveillance network. That segment generally does not contain the people who are under surveillance. The fact that Google knows it has to be coy about it knows that it's unsavory. And exactly what assurances do we have that Google is properly vetting access to this information, given their complete lack of customer service and their historical inability to properly run adsense, their core business?

> And exactly what assurances do we have that Google is properly vetting access to this information, given their complete lack of customer service and their historical inability to properly run adsense, their core business? reply

You could probably ask the thousands of ex-employees who'd love to make $$ by breaking the story to the media. Don't you think it would sell?

Also, often when I hear stories about that company not providing support, it's for a service that has at the very least hundreds of thousands of clients/users, a lot of whom pay very little or nothing. How would you provide support to all of them? Would someone who spends $1Mil / yr on Ads have trouble reaching someone quickly?

> There is a certain segment of society who knows exactly what's being done with this massive surveillance network. That segment generally does not contain the people who are under surveillance.

Can you elaborate? Not criticising, genuinely interested. Given that "people who are under surveillance" are generally aware of the revelations made to the press by Snowden and others, I suppose you mean something else, hence my curiosity.

> and their historical inability to properly run adsense, their core business

From a business perspective their ad network is hugely successful, what do you mean by saying "inability to properly run"? Or perhaps you refer to the lack of privacy options offered to the public?

Maybe not directly. But I am quite sure the worlds' mafias have access to LexisNexis, or Facebook...

In fact isn't the first thing ISIS does with kidnappees is pull up their LinkedIn account, so they can see who they just kidnapped and who they can ransom?

This data should never be collected. At all. Screw advertisers.

This is a nerd community. The word "evil" was watered down to meaninglessness in this context decades ago.

We have literally no idea what all they're doing with the data.

I highly doubt the "evil" in "don't be evil" was meant to refer to selling your location history to kidnapping gangs.

> it helps keep the economy churning

Do we need so much of it?

Can we just cut out about 99.99% of advertising? Can I see 1-2 ads per day instead of being bombarded constantly?

I don't see what the issue is. Google knows your location, your phone provider knows your location without asking, and probably many other apps that you've given location access to knows where your location is.

They can use information like GPS, ip address and cell towers. So I don't know why this clickbait article is just pointing out these two google apps.

> I don't see what the issue is.

Seriously?

> Google knows your location,

Yes, that's the issue: you can no longer deny Google the ability to know your location as long as either Maps or Play is installed.

> your phone provider knows your location without asking

First, Google is not my phone provider, and second, my provider only has access to cell tower info, not GPS info. GPS info is much more precise than tower info, and it's obviously not possible to deny cell tower info to the provider.

> and probably many other apps that you've given location access to knows where your location is.

The key phrase there being "that you have given access to". You cannot turn off access to Maps and Play and more. That's the problem.

So, this is what murders my phone's battery? I thought it was weird that GPS icon has been always active recently, and that my battery juice tends to start rapidly dropping sometimes without any reason. Now the only way I can use my phone without constantly charging is turning GPS off completely.

It's really strange to me. I noticed yesterday that the Play app started leaking battery like crazy on my Nexus 5. 100%-0% within 10 hours of idle, 33% due to Google Play Store.

Today, 6 hours since the full charge I'm looking again at the battery screen: 38% battery left.

16% Chrome (Background CPU: 1min 24s, Foreground CPU: 16s, GSM: 2h36min 58s)

16% Google Play Store (Total CPU: 10s, GPS: 6h 20min 6s, GSM: 1min28s)

6% Screen

4% Android system

Chrome is most surprising, as it's not usually there. I did a single web search three hours ago though. The phone is idle all day otherwise. There's something rotten in the mobile software industry that's literally making our pockets warm for no good reason.

Dear Google, please at least be a good citizen in your own ecosystem.

It seems like Google is trying to slowly boil the frog of location based ads. It started with Map Places reviews, which doesn't feel like an ad but it's annoying. I haven't seen anything like the McDonalds ad but that would infuriate me. At least I can disable permissions on the Play app.

Is this a big deal? I almost always turn GPS off anyway. I turn GPS on when I am travelling, and very occasionally for a minute if I use Google Map. GPS runs the battery down. Is GPS something most users leave turned on?

I thought the article would be about tracking via wifi use, which they probably do.

GPS is always on. "Off" is just slower updates to conserve power.

GPS is nice to add exif info to photos. Also, who wants to turn GPS on and off, every time you're using maps?

Me. It's like two clicks. It used to be one when I kept a widget for that purpose on my home screen. I also turn off bluetooth and wifi if I'm not using them.

You know what happens when you force a user to do an extra two clicks to accomplish something that should take one? They don't do it.

Yes. I'm not sure how that's relevant. I'm not just "some user". I'm actually me, and I know what my actual behavior actually is. I'm just describing what I actually do, not prescribing what someone should do.

I do. I thought everyone did.

Apparently I was wrong g to think everyone did? To clarify, I turn my off to save a little battery, same as my Bluetooth and wifi.

Probably. I would assume that only a very small percentage of Android users does that.

Huh that's what I get for assuming!

Me! Always. Otherwise it'd always be running. Who would want that? I don't need to know my GPS location very often, so I see no reason to leave it enabled all the time - that might serve Google's interests but it definitely does not serve mine.

Does leaving GPS on in location services, but not using an app that requests my location in its permissions drain the battery?

No.

Not actively using (as in not having it up on the screen), or not having it installed at all?

Not having it open on the screen, and not having it running as a background process

I suspect that most people don't understand much about location services and reference 'GPS' as the generic term for location tracking whether it's via GPS/Wifi/Cell tower/other. The bottom line is if your device has any sort of connectivity whatsoever that can geolocate your device, Google is using it. Off-line when it happens? No problem: they'll log it and upload the data when you reconnect.

>Is this a big deal?

To me? it is a desition that makes want not to use Android.

Before this I did, since it didn't do anything as long as no app requested GPS. (at least it did feel very much like a GPS in warm-up mode when I did use it once in a while, and it had no discernible effect on the battery)

What do you expect from an OS developed by a company that only makes money by selling ads?

Thats not true! They also make lots of money dumping our private data and transactions into XKEYSCORE

On iOS you'll also be tracked 24/7 by Google if you have Waze installed. Hiding behind the "being a traffic crowdsourcing app, we need location data from everyone" it doesn't allow you to use the location sharing option "while using the app", it's either always or never. And there's a purple arrow next to it each time you're driving, a sign that it's currently tracking you, even if the app is closed. (Gray means past 24h). Probably they use accelerometer data to know when you've started driving.

Well, I personally have my GPS off most of the time. That doesn't prevent mobile or WiFi location snooping, but it doesn't eat as much battery as it would if it was left on. Google Play Services are a terrible waste of battery. It's sad there are no options to opt out (provided by Google). Most people don't know/care about opt outs normally, anyway, so it wouldn't be a great loss of revenue to provide such an option.

Google Play Services provides Google's aGPS abstraction. Whenever an app asks for location data and doesn't want to use much battery, it asks Google Play Services, which will return coarse location data, cached location data, or GPS data as requested by the app.

McDonald's uses a beacon protocol to suggest downloading an app without using location data.

This security researcher just doesn't understand anything about his phone.

Seems to be Android's answer to iOS lock-screen app suggestions (since iOS 8; 2014) - https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/03/apple-delivers-location-ba... ?

I feel like this is the same thing that Samsung does with Bluetooth. Whenever you disable it, they make sure that the low-power Bluetooth stays on.

"Otherwise, how would our beacons and geofences work on the customers who explicitly don't want it?"

At least Google can claim that they are collecting location on behalf of the rest of the Android apps on your phone.

My guess: GPS tells you what country and city you are in, so licensed Google play content can be restricted by geography. All hail our overlords the content restriction owners!

I'm willing to bet that they're using the Nearby and Geofence APIs (or even the Awareness API) for this, as opposed to keeping GPS running all the time.

Use Cyanogenmod sans Google, or Replicant. Use OpenStreetMap apps like osmand for navigation.

I've been trying to whittle down my Nexus to F-Droid only apps because I want to eventually get on a ROM without Google. I'm stuck on the native phone and messenger apps because I'm on Project Fi and the way they run that stuff is odd but I know there are good replacements for those once I get off that. The one app I can't get seem to give up willingly is Maps and it's all because of search. OsmAnd does navigation just fine for me, but finding the place I want to go is really, really difficult. In a pinch, I don't want to be stuck doing web searches to find addresses and then figure out how to turn them into coordinates. I've got AddressToGPS which is ok but it doesn't always find what I'm looking for and there's no ability to search near my current location that I can find, which is a key feature. Is there a better solution?

i bought an android 6.0 device a couple days ago. (Moto G4) On android 6 you can enable/disable individual permissions on each app, however Google Play already had location disabled.

You can use Android phones without a Google account or Google Play. But, as an act of revenge, Google broke voice dialing for people who do that.

When people ask me why I want my next phone to be an Ubuntu device, I point them at articles like these.

If you're thinking Canonical wouldn't sell its users down the river, there's a bridge for sale in Brooklyn you might like...

Unfortunately you are right. "GNU/Linux inside" is not sufficient to guarantee your privacy (not to mention that Android is Linux-based too): what we would really need is a community-developed mobile OS.

Hopefully eventually this will become more prevalent https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile .

Also, I will say that some of the AOSP-based distros, such as Cyanogenmod, run just fine without Google Play installed; you get most of the (open-source) apps from F-Droid or if you need something from the Play store, sideloading or downloading from APKPure is a possibility.

Thanks, as an Android user I should probably go for Cyanogenmod. I have used it in the past and I liked it.

Canonical have already done a few questionable things with Ubuntu (when thinking about privacy) but I think that they are still the best OS from a usability and privacy standpoint...

I've personally had dealings with them, and there is no way they should be trusted. :(

please tell more :)

No comment from Google as to why they do this.

Give you two guesses and the answer is "Your data as a guinea pig is worth a lot"

The data is not even worth that much. Estimates are that it's less than $1 / user / month.

But Google does it anyway, because it costs them less than that to implement.

edit: For instance, Facebook says each user is worth about $0.73 / user / month. [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how-much-...

$1 for a billion+ users? Long as it costs them less, should add up to nice sum per month.

Individually its not worth much. But the collection from everyone is worth a lot.

North americans are worth over 4 dollars a month according to that.

4 dollars per 3 months:

> If you happen to live in Europe, including the UK, you’re only worth one-third of a North American to Facebook, at $4.50 every three months, while the “rest of the world”, which includes most developing nations are only worth $1.22 per user.

That's about $1.50 / user / month... which is higher than I thought. brb, going to start social network

> You may be surprised to hear that a US or Canadian user is worth $13.54 each quarter to Facebook,

4 dollars a month.

You bought a phone with an OS developed by (and using services provided by) an Ad company. What did you expect.

While an official statement would be nice, I suspect at least one reason is right in the article:

"Security researcher Mustafa Al-Bassam reported on Twitter that he "almost had a heart attack" when he walked into a McDonald's and was prompted on his phone to download the fast food restaurant's app."

Google makes most of its money selling your attention to marketers. This could easily be used to tailor ads.

Within 100 yards of Barnes and Noble? "Ding! Get 10% off your purchase when you present this QR code!"

Not sure why, but your second-ever comment (not this one) is dead. You may be shadowbanned -- fyi.

Both of your comments seemed reasonable to me.

So my workplace was looking at ESBs and suddenly all the sites I visited had ads for MuleSoft and WSO2.

Over the last week or two any browser in my home not using an ad-blocker sees heaps of MuleSoft ads. Almost as though the ad network has noticed that my phone at work travels to my house and has created a linkage between the two.

This is probably less savvy than that. If you login to various apps across devices, particularly a Google account, they are linked by a GUID. This can then be used for retargeting purposes as the advertiser wants to target the person and usually not just the particular device/cookie.

To clarify: the ads migrated from being served to my work PC (where I never log into a personal Google account), to my phone (on the same network), to my home PCs (including other people who aren't using my personal Google account).

It's time to switch to Apple.

Apple does this too. They just bury it 4 or 5 system levels deep before you can see that they track you everywhere and recognize your home, work, and other frequently visited locations.

On iOS, location tracking is configurable per-app, at least. I can deny the Weather app the use of my location data while allowing the Camera app to access it.

> Apple does this too.

Do you have any proof that Apple uses this information for advertising purposes? Their privacy statements say otherwise. This would be a huge deal.

I have no proof that it is being used for advertising, but they do still have a copy of everything. Who's to know what their future thoughts about advertising will be. It's their Frequent Locations feature.

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