Once I also mentioned some tv's I was interested in (not on the phone, but in the same room as the phone) and also got ads right afterwards. I do not know if it was related to an app open or the phone itself, but a scary invasion of privacy nonetheless.
We take protecting your Customer Proprietary Network Information or “CPNI” very seriously.
Using CPNI without your additional approval is limited to specific purposes. By using the Services, you allow us to use, disclose, and permit access to your CPNI without your additional approval only for the following limited purposes:
...
Any other purpose permitted by federal law
So they can use your personal data without your approval for anything that's not illegal? Spurious use of the word "limited" there Google.
By using the Services, you allow us to use, disclose, and permit access to your Customer Proprietary Network Information or “CPNI” without your additional approval for any purpose permitted by federal law
I just read it myself, that's essentially what it says. The whole privacy section is just garbage filler to distract you from that, unless I'm reading it completely wrong.
Bingo. The main reason most ToS's are like ten pages long, really. They're counting on you not reading it.
This is also why I always tell people Apple vs Google is a silly comparison. Apple might have a bigger market cap and make more money (currently), but Google largely owns nearly every important market. They're set up to take the deep learning market as well, and if Waymo pans out they're also the first to level 5 autonomous cars.
Hell, during the Obama era, Google had on average 1 White House meeting a week (!). That's influence no market cap can buy.
Funny thing is that I'm typing this on my Macbook Pro with my iPhone next to it. Apple is a sublime hardware company that also takes great care in crafting the most human software experience, but we're going to a 'The Expanse' future where every screen is just a dumb pipe to the cloud and the software on that cloud is just a dumb pipe to your personal AI and massive data trove. Apple is ill-suited for such a world, yet Google would thrive in it.
I had no idea about this - does anyone have citations on what the meetings were about? Were they just typical lobbying efforts?
1. Is there any proof that google "mines" your phone conversations on project fi?
2. Have you done testing? Like, get a friend and do several phone calls over a week with trigger words you agreed on and that you will use a couple of times (e.g. herpes, pregnancy, etc.).
I do know that it does not disable these sort of "immediate" responses to your current location. You can disable the responses (one by one separately), but it is pretty clear that it disables only that specific response, not the data collection itself.
AFAIK, Google doesn't mine phone calls, and I'm not aware of any companies that do. Even thinking about it from a technical point of view, it seems quite unlikely.