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> Apple is not, and iOS makes it significantly harder for rogue apps to get access to personal data without the actual user's direct permission.

Huh? Can you please, concretely, elaborate on how this app makes it easy for other "rogue apps" to access your personal data? Or how is this any significantly different from iCloud Find my Friends feature - especially since iCloud has very interesting exceptions for privacy data collection in EULA.

Or if I say it differently - if you actually read EULAs and what both companies collect, there is no privacy difference between Apple in Google when it comes to cloud services.

The raised concerns about tracking are VERY valid - but they are valid (as you said) for both platforms and calling iOS as "more secure" in this respect is extremely misleading and gives false sense of security. After all, iOS ships the feature BY DEFAULT, thus creating all the pressures you mentioned. Android doesn't.

You're putting words in OP's mouth. S/he only said that iOS makes it harder for apps to access user's data without direct permission. Which is undoubtedly true; Android app permissions are very crude and usually granted when you install app, whereas iOS asks the user the first time the app actually tries to access data (e.g. camera, contacts, GPS).

The permission model in Android changed in Android 6. Apps using the sdk that was released with Android 6 will have to ask users for permissions as well. I expect that eventually older SDK's will stop working on modern Android.

Less than ~25% of active Android devices are on Marshmallow or Nougat, which somewhat tempers the impact of this change.

iOS does offer a slightly nicer three tiered request strategy over Google's yes|no. iOS let's you grant location access only when the app is active

Actual EU/US realworld stats are >50%, not 25. Don't mislead.

iOS usage with the tighter permission model is 100%. End of discussion.

I think everyone deserves basic security, not only the first world.

If the Android developer site dashboard [1] could be considered reliable, then the latest statistics show only 26.7% devices (as of yesterday, December 5, 2016) that run Marshmallow and Nougat. This leaves 73.3% devices that do not have the ability to control permissions individually (unless they've been modified with add-ons that allow it).

[1]: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

That dashboard practically never reflects the actual distribution of devices in use - at least according to analytics of app we've released (with several mil users across the globe).

That's because they count all the pings of devices that answered across the globe in a sliding window and that is a hugely different number than actual maket share across US and EU and comparable markets. Sure we can then go into details about how poor Indians / Chinese / Africans need secure phones too (and I agree!), but those people have no means to afford an iPhone either.

(And no, sorry, I can't provide you with NDA protected market data :/ )

So if we ignore more than half the world, 50% of users still don't get those improvement. If you're under the impression that Google isn't able to properly track devices that hit play services, that's an entirely different and more worrisome problem.

The pretty large plurality (if not majority) of Android devices in the wild don't have have Google's services installed and many of those also get no software updates -- so they're stuck on what old ROM they came with, probably Lollipop.

Google already changed that in Android 6. You can install an app and only allow it certain permissions.

Of course, thanks to the Android ecosystem, it will take another year or two until a significant portion of people actually switches to devices running Android 6.

Actual usage stats from several widely deployed apps to US/EU show that Android 6 and newer is already over 50% of active devices.

Slower than iOS yes, but not as alarming anymore.

Please provide a citation for your stats if you're going to repeat it. As mentioned in my comment above, the Android official dashboard has Android 6 and newer at less than 27% as per the latest measurement yesterday. [1] I can't imagine how this couldn't be alarming.

[1]: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

That's not true. I WAS true a few years back which is what is probably misleading you.

>1. The reason people raise concerns about Google, and less so about iOS, is that Google and Apple are in different businesses. Google is in the business of profiting off your personal data and that of your family members. Apple is not, and iOS makes it significantly harder for rogue apps to get access to personal data without the actual user's direct permission.

An alternative take on this is that Google has more of a vested interest in securing what data they do collect and making sure it does not leak to any other party. They've generally been ahead of the curve in terms of privacy on the web, such as keeping rogue CA's in check (remember the CNNIC fiasco?), pushing for HTTPS everywhere, or making 2-factor authentication more usable.

Unless said rogue apps are written by Google, how do they help Google's business model?

> Unless said rogue apps are written by Google, how do they help Google's business model?

Tracking information is a revenue stream. Revenue pays for content development. Content sells apps. Google profits off app sales.

Therefore, Google has a disincentive to do anything about the transparent (read: user doesn't know it's happening) third party collection of tracking information. Particularly given the noted disinclination of Android users to purchase apps, relative to their iOS peers.

> If your kids are carrying a cell phone, it should probably be a secure phone, with strictly enforced app store policies, and with a secure OS that is not provided by a company with every incentive to gather and monetize personal and private information.

Pest or cholera. At least it allows you to tinker with it, as opposed to iOS.

And who of the God knows how many users of Android will 'tinker' with it? Ignorance of the user base, technical or otherwise, IS a valid argument against this sorta thing. We made it so.

No, disallowing learning is how you get ignorance.

You are suffering from a common misconception, that you can't tinker with your iOS devices. I tinker with my iOS devices all the time. As do many people, with their own devices. With help, encouragement, and software tools provided for that purpose by Apple. I just can't tinker with your iOS device.

Can you install a non-webkit web rendering/JS engine with that process?

You can. It won't pass cert for the app store, but you can.

Don't you need a mac+xcode to do that though?

Sure. But that's part and parcel to doing anything on there. It's not really a big deal when you can get a Mac that can do it for $300 used--it's probably going to be cheaper than the phone was.

Okay, you can install stuff for a limited time on "your own" device.

You can't use it for a non-trivial amount of time without constantly reinstall it. You can't share it with your friends. You can't make it integrate with anything else on the device.

You can tinker with it in the same sense that you have freedom of speech in a solitary confinement cell.

Oh, and only if you also paid thousands for a glorified license dongle.

> At least it allows you to tinker with it, as opposed to iOS.

Sadly, that's not true anymore.

On iOS, if you jailbreak, you can still use Apple Pay, and all apps.

On Android, if you root, or modify anything, Android Pay stops working, Snapchat stops working, Pokemon Go stops working, most banking apps stop working, most games stop working.

I've been a supporter of Android since the start, but by now it's just as proprietary as iOS, with more spying and tracking and analytics, and less possibilities to tinker.

I can install a non-Google-approved app on my phone via the normal phone UI, without having to exploit any kind of bug in the system (I do have to set a checkbox in the settings). That's a very concrete difference.

Is that so much better? You can do the same on iOS now, if you have a mac, by sideloading from the mac.

Android has been losing openness, iOS has been gaining it, they've finally met in the middle with the Android 7 release.

>by sideloading from the mac

So not the same, then.

Used to work for a company bug testing their app. We used a service called installr which worked on both devices. On iOS you installed a certificate/profile and on android, it downloaded an apk which then got installed manually. 100% of the time it was easier and quicker on iOS. And this was downloaded from the internet, not a mac.

> With regard to the cheerleaders saying there are no problems whatsoever with this feature

I'm not criticizing your post, just noting that all of your points are about Location Services and not the Trusted Contacts App.

Trusted Contacts just hooks into Location Services to allow the user to explicitly share already captured information with 3rd parties.

Location Services is used by tons of other apps and if you dumb it down or turn it off those apps will stop working or beg you to turn on the most granular of it's settings.

Here are some of the ways that Location Services is used:

- Google Wallet will see you're at XYZ Retail store and pop up a notification with your rewards card barcode on it.

- Google Maps will see you're at the trendy new restaurant and ask you to snap a couple photos and review the place.

- Google Now or Maps (not entirely sure which) will tell you if your commute home is going to suck or not and alert you to accidents on the road ahead.

- Google Rewards will ask you randomly/creepily "have you been to ABC and if so when?" and give you a pittance for your data.

- If someone has access to your Google Account, they can easily activate the find my phone feature and see exactly where you are without your knowledge.

Regardless of whether or not you have any of these Apps installed, if Location Services is on then it is silently tracking your location. You can see everything it tracks on your timeline (https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)

> If someone has access to your Google Account, they can easily activate the find my phone feature and see exactly where you are without your knowledge.

When your phone is located using the "Find my phone" feature, it pops up a notification on the phone (this phone has been located). Of course, if they had physical access to your phone in the past, they may have blocked this notification, but it is provided by Google Play Services, so that requires to block a wide range of notifications (eg. all "app update available" notifications iirc).

On the other hand, they may access your location history, if you enabled that, and see where you went in the (possibly very recent) past without any notification.

Interesting, I hadn't noticed that before. If you go to use the feature it also asks you to re-authenticate so the person would have to know your password as well.

3 & 4 seem significant, though perhaps an inevitable problem with any location/rescue tool that bundles into cell phones. After all, even without this a parent could easily call and say "take a picture of where you are and send it to me" or "go on Facebook and share your location". Information sharing almost always risks invasiveness if someone has the power to go "share now or face consequences".

That said, the last known location feature seems like a special concern. Right now "my phone is off" is a cure for location requests from an authority, even if it carries the possibility of later action. This change creates a system where last location is available regardless, and a clearly-intentional settings change is required to alter that.

I don't know how much of this to lay on Google, since "don't build tools authority figures can misuse" would have prevented fire. But I do think there's a common failure to consider use cases like minors with authoritative parents, when it's very possible to build tools that are at least less easily misused in that situation.

Responses to your commentary:

1. Yes people will always raise concerns but if this saves lives and makes people safer then we should embrace it and be happy about it. 2. Yes and Android is more open in general than Apple 3. If I Richart Ruddie am leaving Baltimore City to head back to Baltimore County/Owings Mills and I want my parents to know that I am safe then I would be glad to have a seamless feature like this no? Social pressure = safety? 4. There definitely needs to be a level of control to turn the features on and off. 5. Interesting thoughts on the monetization aspect but its more about safety here you would rather have your child monetized and save their life then to not monetize or at least I hope so.

> Google is in the business of profiting off your personal data and that of your family members. Apple is not

Apple 100% is profiting off you and your family members just not off of sharing data which has pluses and minuses. They have milked out that Apple Tax to build the world's richest company.

Money dictates these positions. Currently Apple has a market share of about 12% and has 103% of the profit share. This means every other phone companies combined loss money as a whole and Apple out performed them.

http://bgr.com/2016/11/04/iphone-profits-apple-samsung-share...

Apple's Achilles heel is with AI and has to do with their position with data. What a pain it was for my rebellious daughter (She buys Apple products and laughs in my face) to go from one phone to the next and it has to relearn her because things don't transfer. Apple Maps doesn't know where she use to go on her old phone etc..

Tim Cook and company will have to start collecting and sharing data between devices and spaces. This will be done to save SIRI and what I get with Google Now. You might think I am sipping the kool-aid but I believe that our data will serve us more tin the future and this present Apple stance will have to change.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3131586/apple-ios/apple...

> Currently Apple has a market share of about 12% and has 103% of the profit share. This means every other phone companies combined loss money as a whole and Apple out performed them.

What kind of maths is this? O.o

Enough competitors loose money on smartphones that the total profit was negative but Apple made a nice dime.

Imagine the profit of the phone industry as a whole was $100 and the profit of Apple's phone division (with 12% of the market share) was $103. So the rest of the industry (considered as a single whole, which of course it isn't) must have lost $3.

I mean... does that mean that Facebook is making 100.000% of profits because Twitter is losing money?

How is that kind of mangling of numbers useful except for stroking Apple fans?

...

Even though, on second thought, we should start putting "Making 1400% of profit!" on our marketing materials as well. Has a pop to it :)

There's no mangling that I can see? Take your profit number. Take the profit number for the industry as a whole (there's an opportunity for gerrymandering here, but phone sales are a pretty natural category). Divide a by b.

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/pre-algebra/pre-algebra-rat...

Percentages are ratios. when you are over a 1:1 ratio (AKA 100%) and then is over 1:1.5 or 1:1.03

Profit Apple = $1,000,000,000

Net loss Android = -$3,000,000

> What kind of maths is this?

SORRY - Above 4th Grade Math

Sorry Snarky and not trying to be a jerk but TRYING to just make a funny commentary on society. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to sit in a room of very intelligent people and they have no math skills!!!! How is it acceptable to say "I'm not good in math."

Yes I know Pre-Algebra Math shouldn't be known by adults! It is okay not to know what 103% means.

I've owned iPhones since the 3G and have always backed up the old one and restored the backup on the new one and the new phone picks up the previous locations, etc. This whole thing is integrated into the initial setup of the new phone, though it relies on iCloud backups. Doing the backup/restore through iTunes works very well too, just not quite as smoothly.

Her one laptop is a Chromebook. That doesn't work for her.

iCloud backup doesn't require a computer, just Wifi.