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horsecaptin

What sort of privacy guarantees come with a Google Device?

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Absolutely none.

Source: Ran a Nexus 5 for a few years and found out about Google Location History after I traded it in for an iPhone.

Oh, you mean just like the iPhone does too?

http://www.iclarified.com/36198/how-to-view-the-location-his...

FWIW, you can disable location tracking on Android phones too.

Android phones send your location history to Google. iPhone location history stays on the phone. That's the key difference.

This exactly. Android phones can't do a thing without connecting to some privacy-invading cloud service.

And yeah, I've tried Replikant. Nice proof of concept, but not usable.

Try LineageOS without GApps. More usable, but contains driver blobs.

> iPhone location history stays on the phone.

Not if you take photos and use iCloud.

There is a clear difference between using iCloud (which is opt-in) with geotagged photos (which you can disable from on-phone settings), and your phone sending your location to Google at regular intervals.

Yes for sure. Defaults matter and I agree that Google and Apple do things differently here. However, the phrase "iPhone location history stays on the phone" is false for nearly every iPhone user (100% of iPhone users I know).

Location history is opt-in as well although the assistant will push you to turn it on during setup.

The button starts in the enabled position, so it's opt-out. You can't accidentally avoid answering the question.

What button? If you skip setting up the assistant entirely you end up with location history disabled.

Assistant setup happens during initial setup of the phone, though.

Yes, you can back out of it, but it wouldn't typically be by accident.

You mean the feature clearly listed on their privacy dashboard that can be disabled and have it's history wiped with two clicks? That you opt'd into when activating the Android phone and turning on Google Now?

That's a feature. Helps me find my car in parking lots, tells me what traffic is like on my commute, helps me retrace my steps after a heavy night of drinking...

That's like asking if there's cold beer in Hell.

(spoiler: there isn't any)

Even for the devil?

It's guaranteed that you would be tracked.

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