Hacker News Reader

Comment by tinus_hn | Hacker News Reader

If you chose to allow Chrome to know your location, so it can show you on the map, do you consent to have your location tracked continuously and associated with your Google account?

View on HN

No, that's a setting in your Google account and not in the browser. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en

That Q&A is very careful to avoid stating that location data is not sent to Google when "location history" is turned off. You really think that by flipping a switch on your account page, they are going to start discarding some of the data they are sent from client devices?

But would people necessarily associate "I gave Chrome the OS-level location permission, so I could enable location on <non-Google website>" with Chrome itself tracking the location and connecting it to a Google account?

How do we know if turning off that setting actually does stop location tracking, considering what we know about Google's past history?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/13/google-lo...

I have long ago turned all of Google's activity tracking preferences off and erased the existing activity, yet once in a while some Google service reveals to me that it knows something it shouldn't.

Google Takeout is a good way to find out all the things you thought you deleted, but are still hanging around on their servers. Even stupid banner photos from PicasaWeb and G+ 8 years ago were buried in my Takeout that I had zero access to see or delete, but they were there (and probably still are).

Same.

Also, why must all the services attempt to guilt me into turning it back on?

The interesting thing is the failure mode if you don't agree to continuous tracking. Google uses the last place it was allowed to track you to instead of allowing the user to specifically enable a location update for "near me" queries to maps or the assistant. It may not be meant as one but it feels like a dark pattern, particularly when you can tap an icon to update your position in maps but any "near me" requests still go back to the last tracked location.

It definitely is. You can't even set a "home" or "work" location without enabling continuous tracking.

Yes, you can. I have location history disabled but I can route to home or work in Google Maps. Unless I am missing something.

Disc: Googler.

Did this change recently? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18070183

No. I still can't use Home or Work. Maybe @google.com accounts have an exemption.

It's on my @gmail.com account.

Does this work?:

Enable it, then set home and work. Then disable it.

That link is 2.5 years old. Not sure when it changed but it's not the case right now AFAIK.

The linked image says "coarse location" for Chrome/Analytics.

So this is not your GPS data but most likely IP based city/metro.

Also it says "may" everywhere. AFAIK DDG may be doing all of those things too.

From a technical POV this looks such a huge FUD that it's sad.

> AFAIK DDG may be doing all of those things too.

Except that DDG explicitly says they are not:

https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

The word "location" is nowhere in your link.

Sure! But the page does say this:

When you access DuckDuckGo (or any Web site), your Web browser automatically sends information about your computer, e.g. your User agent and IP address.

Because this information could be used to link you to your searches, we do not log (store) it at all. This is a very unusual practice, but we feel it is an important step to protect your privacy.

If they don't store IP addresses then (I believe) they can't use wifi-router-based methods to find your location. Your browser also doesn't get a popup asking to give ddg your location.

So yeah I stand by my link and my interpretation of it.

It's actually annoying, you have to go turn on a setting somewhere. I've had a few folks frustrated with this, I think for most users if they give google access to their location they expect google will remember it.

Fair point, I do believe we shouldn't live in a world where we have to continously watch what flags has our software enabled, but I guess I'm someone who's always alert (or at least that's what I tell myself).

At this point, I think mine is more of a nihilism towards this as I cut everything at the only reliable level: the network. But even then, I've hammered myself way too much over privacy, and it didn't make me any happier, since, at the end of the day, if anyone wants to track you, they'll track you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com