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Comment by mr-ron | Hacker News Reader

I opened up my settings to allow Google maps to have access to my location all the time, even when not using the app.

I have found the Timeline feature in Google maps to be a huge game changer in terms of 'where ive been' and 'what Ive done'. I can look back months, see exactly what routes I went down, where I was at a given time. It will even match pictures with the locations.

Especially for journaling vacations (sometimes weeks later), and reliving memories, its the greatest app Ive used in some time.

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That's the thing, to me, the fact that the information is connected to me is the reason I use Google maps. I understand it's not for everyone, but to me it's a feature, not a bug.

The issue with privacy labels also is that you have to list the worst possible scenario, whereas through options, you can possibly reduce that list quite a bit.

Google Maps now has an incognito mode which unless I'm wrong would be equivalent if not more privacy centric than Apple Maps. But again, the privacy labels can't show that, they only show labels for the worse case.

I consciously leave a lot of the Google data collecting features on.

More than once, Google search suggestions have been freakishly good; this is coming out of my ass, but I feel like they might use your contacts for suggestions, which I usually notice studying last minute for a test or whatnot.

Then, of course, you have things like Google Photos, the aforementioned Google Maps features, etc.

> I can look back months, see exactly what routes I went down, where I was at a given time.

So can Google.

I'd love to have these features but the price is just too high. The price would be too high even if I trusted Google (which I don't), because every company that collects personal information will be hacked because no company is properly incentivised to protect users' data.

You know your phone service provider has that location information in resolution that’s almost as good, right?

The only way to opt out is to turn your phone off (equivalently, leave it at home).

For some people, the fact that google also knows it is no big deal. For some it is. But if you are worried about your whereabouts being leaked, how can you justify using a phone in the first place? Verizon and AT&T are more likely to get hacked than google (or just sell that info outright, which they have done wholesale before)

You know that most people don’t have a choice in whether or not to have a cell phone, right?

Privacy fatalism helps no one. Demanding that someone who is concerned about their privacy to “justify” their situation — one which they have no practical way of opting out of - is victim blaming.

Some people don’t want to be tracked. Any steps they take to reach that state are valid. Absolute privacy is impossible in this dystopia we now inhabit —- much of which has been built by the people who frequent this board —- but these doesn’t make Google’s absolutely trash privacy practices any less egregious.

> You know your phone service provider has that location information in resolution that’s almost as good, right?

Not really. Tower triangulation is nowhere close to as accurate. It places you in the general agea with a pretty large error bound. Leaking Behavioural details require fine grained location.

> You know your phone service provider has that location information in resolution that’s almost as good, right?

Just because one industry has access to my location data without me being able to stop it, doesn't mean I'm going to give any other company that wants it unfettered access to my location data for whatever purpose they want.

With maps the good news is I do have an opportunity to pick providers that have better privacy policies.

...not to mention they whip out a credit card to make every purchase. And let's not get started on what their ISP records.

I don't think succumbing to defeatism is the correct response to the gross privacy invasion. Take the victories where you can, and fight who you can.

I don’t see how voluntarily letting a service see your location is an invasion of privacy.

I don’t believe that was their point.

If someone chooses to be privacy focused, then they will likely opt out of the things that they can control - that doesn’t change because there are others they can’t.

“Voluntarily” is doing some heavy lifting there. Is it “voluntary” if it’s required to use the service — including aspects that don’t “need” it? Is it “voluntary” if the use of that data is governed by one-sided terms that the collecting party can change at any time, for any reason, with little notice or no notice at all? Is it “voluntary” if the technology is so complex that any average-intelligence user could not possibly weigh the pros and cons of such a decision in the face of a $1T company’s cabal of PhD holding ML scientists inventing new ways to exploit that information?

At this point, location tracking by companies is about as “voluntary” as using the web itself.

Or about as voluntary as actions which are performed with a pistol to one’s head.

>I'd love to have these features but the price is just too high.

I know you're speaking in broader terms, but for anyone interested you can have this specific feature (location history) using owntracks and owntracks recorder completely privately.

If you carry a cell phone, your location is already logged by by the wireless carriers, whom I trust much less with my data, both in terms of keeping it secure and not reselling it to third parties [1].

Certainly, some people will want to minimize the number of parties that know you were in location X at time Y. But I’d guess that for many people, myself included, that data simply isn’t that sensitive or interesting.

[1] All the major U.S. carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile) have been fined for reselling users’ location data without consent: https://www.govtech.com/network/wireless-carriers-face-200m-...

> So can Google

More interestingly so can anyone who can get a subpoena or some equivalent judicial order issued to have Google release your location to them.

What is the price?

I've used the app Arc for the same purpose: recording my location all the time even when not running so I know where I've been. But Arc has an excellent privacy policy: all location data stored and processed locally. This is a compromise: local processing means the app can be slow, but IMO the privacy aspects far outweigh a sluggish UI.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/arc-app-location-activity/id10...

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