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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

The fact that there even is such a thing as "user location history" is the problem. Carving out (politically motivated, for sure) exceptions only shows the extent of Google's massive abuse of privacy.

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I actually love location history. Makes it easy to answer questions like: "what was the name of that great restaurant in Edinburgh when I visited 4 years ago?"

Edit: but I do agree it should be opt-in

That is a very emotional argument --but I accept that you could opt in to it. On the other hand, you might instead discover a new or different restaurant experience you would not have otherwise. Which, of course, could be better or worse.

I have nothing against tracking your own location and keeping records of it yourself; but it's an entirely different thing when a company which arguably has more power than the governments of multiple countries does it by default and keeps the records on its servers.

> does it by default

Yet the Google blog post says

> Location History is a Google account setting that is off by default

See https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/protecting-pe...

FWIW I checked my own Google account. It was not enabled. And I have no recollection or plan to ever enable it.

It's saddening to see HN users (among all people) peddling falsehoods like this.

> Location History is a Google account setting that is off by default

Android still by default "shares" location with Google. That setting is merely to turn off storing that data on Google's side. Unless they get a warrant compelling them to keep it. And unless they are lying, again:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-admits-tracking-users-l...

Apple still creates a relational database of iPhone user location by default too, I don't think this is a terribly surprising practice. I don't like either company doing it, but something tells me that they don't have a choice.

Apple Maps is intentionally designed not to associate any data with Apple IDs, and to use random ethereal identifiers for parts of the route.

So... source?

Find My is enabled by default on pretty much all Apple devices, no?

I think it asks if you want to turn it on during the set up flow, but I don't remember. I know it's off on mine, I suppose if you want to use Find My they have to have your location, since that's it's purpose.

Apple's Find My page seems to indicate it's end to end encrypted in many purposes, but lists all the ways it has to reveal your location to Apple to provide the feature.

End-to-end encryption doesn't do much good when Apple (and by extension, the NSA) is on the other end. It's the same deal as Google, with different set dressing.

Someone really ought to sue Google so that during discovery Google will be compelled to speak the truth. The amount of confusion in this issue is immense. And tech publications like ZDNet is part of the problem. Conflating concepts like tracking vs collecting, not to mention the distinction between anonymous, pseudonymous, and tied-to-account tracking. In this particular article the title "tracking" clearly doesn't match the article's content where the Google spokesperson says "so that data was immediately discarded". Is Google lying about this? I think only a legal discovery will find out.

This has already happened, and entered some glorious emails into the public record, like Google engineers stating they'd find their location history settings confusing, despite being basically an expert in the field.

That isn't how lawsuits and discovery works. You can't just sue someone to go on a rogue fact-finding mission.

I have not looked at this for a while, but Google used to tie location search history which is valuable to users with location collection which is mostly valuable to Google. There is probably a perfectly good engineering explanation why, but it's hard to unsee abuse of market domination to track location data angle.

This was changed in 2020; they used to keep it by default.

Google's reputation on such things is far from spotless. That's not HN's fault.

Several solutions to track your location on your device and on your private cloud exist. I use a Nextcloud add on. Nobody but me knows where I went.

nextcloud is sort of complex to manage, no?

Maybe it was at one time, but it is very easy nowadays. It can be setup in many ways. https://growyourown.services/beginners-guide-to-nextcloud/ Mine runs on a Raspberry PI with many services on the yunohost.org platform. I love it.

I've used it to geofence my employer and automatically fill out timesheets.

This is sort of the problem - it's too damn seductive.

I completely disagree. Someone filed a fraudulent accident report with my insurance company (probably a parking attendant stole my insurance info from my glove box). Google location data saved me as I could illustrate exactly where I was at the supposed time of accident.

I have found it useful for hiking and stuff too.

Good for you. But what about the rest of us? Or even yourself on any other day?

To equate privacy with convenience is ill advised.

Turn it off? Use another device?

It should be off by default, rather than on by default, so you can choose to have it, and we don't accidentally go to prison for going to a doctor who was legal to visit last week and forgetting to alter one of a million privacy settings on one of fifty devices.

It is off by default, on iOS at least: you have to open Google maps and opt-in to always-on location tracking.

It’s by far my favorite feature of Google maps.

Off by default in one app on one device, we still have to worry about smartwatches, cell tower positions, network geolocation, 400 thousands apps with location access to GPS or who knows what; your car reporting back to tesla that you ate somewhere that sold pork in saudi arabia, or visited an abortion clinic in texas, or who knows.

It's too damn much.

I personally don't use corporate shit anymore, but I know that's a near-impossible tech for people whose full-time job isn't deep tech. We need to make life livable for those people, by legislating foremost of all, but also by making tools available and easy to use, and I'm sure many things I can't think of, but we should at least be discussing it.

That wasn't the statement being responded to.

Location history is off by default. I've turned it on because I'm happy with the trade-offs involved, but if you don't think it's worth it just don't turn it on.

Congratulations on the Google exit, though if I recall from previous discussions you don't view ads as a negative on society. So your trade-offs will probably look different than many others in that regard.

I was able to determine exactly where and when catalytic converter was stolen from my car, thanks to my location history data.

I used it on other occasions as well. My only complaint is that it's not more precise.

Couldn't you tell by the load roar when you started the car?

Before I figured out what the loud roar meant I already forgot when I parked, and when I first noticed any issue.

Google location history let me check that the car was parked where it was parked just for one night (I misremembered it as longer period).

Then I could accurately relate it to the police. Which of course will lead to nothing. But I felt better when I could make statements with cerainity.

This is a good opportunity for privacy proponents and activists to take advantage of this opening and push for a stop to the collection of any of this information.

This is the time to take the mile, this is the time to make the slope slippery.

At least for high-impact locations if they can’t get everything. Women’s shelters and hospitals would be an excellent start.

Neither companies not governments should have people's information at their fingertips. Ok, maybe on foreign spies, yes, by all means, but not for citizens. They should not have that kind of information on people. This is something we used to make fun of the Stasi for --and they didn't have THIS capability. But, yet here we are happy to accept it these days.

Gay bars. The homes of people who have been to gay bars. Synagogues.

Why do "privacy activists" have standing to intermediate between me and a third party, if I want to use that third party's services to remember where I've been? Privacy activists need to check themselves.

No problem if you opt in to it as an option.

Per [1]:

- Location History is turned off by default for your Google Account and can only be turned on if you opt in.

- You can pause Location History at any time in your Google Account's Activity controls.

- You control what’s saved in your Location History. You can view the places where you’ve been in Google Maps Timeline, which you can edit or use to delete your Location History.

And...

- You can turn off Location History for your account at any time.

- You can manage and delete your Location History information with Google Maps Timeline. You can choose to delete all of your history, or only parts of it.

- You can choose to automatically delete Location History that’s older than 3 months, 18 months, or 36 months.

Seriously, I don't see how it could be more flexible and user-controlled than this.

(Disclaimer: Googler, but no relationship with Maps or Geo teams. As an individual user, I use and love my location history, and appreciate the level of control I have)

[1] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687

It's like they are incapable of reading and doing their own research. Regardless, a better solution would be to regulate data collection to make alternative self-hosted services available and easy to use and allow you to opt-out as well.

They changed the defaults in response to the threats from the people you disdain. If this is how you think the situation should be, remember it would not be this way if we had to rely on your judgment or efforts.

Disdain? Only one platform allows you to install and use third-party apps. People that act this way are the ones with an iPhone with TikTok installed while complaining about Google. I'm not on Google's side here, I'm just saying the information being presented is factually wrong.

Google changed it to be opt-in because they were getting sued left and right and investigated heavily for doing it by default. This wasn't a voluntary choice, Google only makes ethical decisions when forced to by an outside party and this was no different.

During some of those investigations, it was revealed that even Google engineers found the way Google handled these controls (like the separate Web and App Activity switch) very confusing, leaving ordinary users no hope of understanding it.

Finally, Google uses a bit of a carrot and stick method to push people to enable it. Rewards reminds you constantly you're eligible for more surveys/money with location history on, and you can't even have Google Maps default a "home" location locally, without pervasive location tracking being enabled that informs the company where you're at every five minutes.

Which is to say, the controls are confusing, the defaults only changed because Google was under investigation, and they make the experience especially on Android if you have it off intentionally terrible.

It can be turned off in account settings.

https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols?settings=loca...

I've always wondered whether turning it off merely hides it from the end-user.

Turning it off doesn’t mean google stops the collection of data.

Turn Off buttons are like delete buttons on the internet, they don't really do what they say they do.

Please cite a source for your claim.

Please cite a source where it says they do what they say.

Or ask any experienced web developers, they will tell you.

Of course, but there's also a problem that a specific location, we know, would be enough evidence for far right pitchforks

Exactly. Collecting location data in itself should not be done, and the presumption that Google is somehow equipped to know when not to collect data is pretty disgusting. It's entirely possible that location data is abused in many ways they cannot think of.

For example, a location that ties somebody to the illegal purchase of a pharmacy drug they desperately need, but cannot otherwise obtain.

One could only imagine what the likes of Hitler, Stalin or Mao (to name a few) would have been capable of if only they had been able to compel the likes of Google to release location data. It's an exceptional tool and a weapon in the wrong hands.

Even the better governments of the world are using this kind of information contrary to the spirit of the law and in many cases against the law itself --and very very few in gov't care, what's more most in government want to expand the capabilities. So, yes, imagine the bad guys and gals.

Watching everybody's movements is tyranny. When you compare how much power those classical tyrants had to what the state has now, you may not need to compare the relatively impotent states of the past.

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