New Google default wipes users' location, web history after 18 months | Hacker News Reader

New Google default wipes users' location, web history after 18 months

reuters.com

40 pointspseudolus30 comments

I'm sure the data is still there on a server somewhere for legal/marketing reasons, but now the show_history_to_user field is just set to FALSE.

I don't think they have the balls to pull something like that.

If a manager suggest this in a meeting, the legal folks will eat him alive. If it comes from higher upps, then someone will leak this and that will be the end of Google.

More likely it will get annonomised and feed into since ML. But it would be super illegal to do what you're describing and with as many employees as Google has someone would notice and leak that.

Why would they blatantly violate the law for legal reasons?

You guys will never be happy. Yet you will not apply the same argument to any other product by any other company.

Time for a GDPR information request to find out...

I think so, too. I imagine it's the same with opting-out of "Location History" - you opt-out of seeing the log, not out of locations actually being logged.

It would be cool if there were a way for Google to prove (maybe cryptographically?) the absence of some data on their servers, so that I could verify that my location data has actually been deleted.

I don't want this! Google location history is a constantly useful part of my life.

Out of curiosity, what do you use it for? I turned mine off after learning about how Google gives the info to police, and the only thing I miss is being able to set my home location in Google Maps.

I basically use it as a type of diary. Sometimes the use is just remembering what I did on a particular day for nostalgia purposes, other times it's practical. Couldn't remember when exactly I bought something (but it was a shop I don't go to often) so had a look on my timeline and found the date and claimed on a warranty.

It also gives you data you can look at when analysing your life - e.g. how often I go to a friends, how long I spend walking in a week, how fast particular routes are to work, etc. When I used to fill in timesheets it was an easy record of what time I got to work each day. There's a fairly basic nerdy pleasure from having these facts available. Yes, I could collect this information manually and keep these records myself but that is quite a lot of work which I'd prefer spend doing other things.

I've also used it to piece together the previous night after getting blackout drunk in a foreign city.

Do you really think turning that setting off stops google from collecting it and giving it to the police?

Yes, obviously.

Agree! I use this feature all the time. Especially if I want to find where I went a few years ago

It does have a bug though, if the place you visited changes its name, your history will say you visited $NEW_PLACE instead of $OLD_PLACE.

So if you went to an e.g. Hilton in Berlin in 2018, and in the meantime they shut down/move, and some companies (let's say Facebook) set up offices in the former hotel, if you look in your history, it will say you spent the nights in Facebook offices in Berlin..

Blimey!

That’s a rookie mistake!

Thankfully older accounts are set to auto delete being “off”.

I wonder if there's a local solution to this, store it out of Google's hands.

Course there is. Always is. How badly do you want it?

OwnTracks, Traccar, etc - lots more on F-Droid.

I’ve tried them, none really work as well as Google’s location history.

Meaning....UI/UX (how pretty and well-arranged the buttons are)?

Some specific feature? The data capture?

What's the actual issue?

Also: the proprietary version will usually be a step or two of "new features that may or may not be important" ahead of the FOSS offerings.

There are plenty of apps that can do this of you want it.

What I really want is the ability to turn on GPS without allowing Google to see any data, not even "to improve our services" which is legal speak for "it's ours now, we can do whatever we want".

I am pretty sure Google is not following GDPR in this regard. You cannot force people give you data just because they provide an unrelated service (search) on the same platform.

Edit: to clarify, I want to remove Google maps, install Here or Bing maps it whatever and that should be enough to not send a single positioning sample to Google.

You can turn off Google Location Accuracy (and keep GPS only), in Location setting.

Google Location Accuracy claims that enhanced location data is anonymous.

So you just need "Maps" app from F-Droid?

I think you missed my point.

GPS is so entangled in the OS that as soon as you enable it ten different Google services will record and send your positioning data to different departments at google. But I have ZERO interest in giving anyone my location. I don't care what cool service you have, not interested sorry.

The problem is that as soon as you _enable_ GPS on Android a dialog is shown telling you Google will use your data. If you don't agree, GPS will be turned back off.

(This by itself is a clear GDPR violation, by the way)

I see. Then you need to escape Google with a GNU/Linux phone like Librem 5 or Pinephone.

That compromises your security (and therefore privacy) by not taking advantage of the secure HARDWARE that Google offers,

which is incredible when decoupled from their proprietary spyware and just used with Android Open Source Project (AOSP), or a variant, like GrapheneOS or CalyxOS.

That is not true. You can use GPS without A-GPS on Google Android builds. Just disable Location Service. This is unlike iOS.

Google has multiple services that use GPS. Location services is just one.

Example: security services bypass the location settings.

Those only send your location to Google when they are used, unlike AGPS, which sends it whenever any app looks up location data. GGP comment complained about the latter, which is easy to turn off on Android and impossible to turn off on iOS.

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