Google Map App's Version of Anonymity Might Violate EU Privacy Laws 89
Ars Technica reports that Google's map application for iOS, however popular it might be with users, raises red flags with European regulators, who maintain that it by default does not sufficiently safeguard user privacy as required by EU privacy rules. Ars quotes Marit Hansen of Germany's Independent Centre for Privacy Protection on why: "Hansen's main gripe is that Google's use of 'anonymous' is misleading. 'All available information points to having linkable identifiers per user," she told Computerworld. Hansen added this would allow Google to track several location entries, thus leading to her assumption that Google's 'anonymous location data' would be considered 'personal data' under the European law."
Re: (Score:1)
I'm guessing you've never smelled a vagina.
A blind man passes by a fish counter.
"Hello Ladies!"
Versions of anonymity (Score:1)
LOL. Seriously?
Re:If you are bothered don't ask for directions. (Score:5, Insightful)
if you ask google for directions for a to b then they need to know what a and b are.
True, but they don't need to know who is asking nor that the same person five minutes earlier searched for adult stores.
I don't know how iPhone works. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't checked into it as far as you, but if I leave GPS checked "on", even when I'm not using Latitude, my battery life is horrible.
Is the GPS icon (the satellite dish) visible on the notification bar? If so, then some task is running that is actively querying the GPS receiver, and that can kill your battery.
On my HTC Thunderbolt, I leave GPS "on" all the time so that apps don't have to ask if they can turn it on, and I get at least 36 hours between charges, and as much as 60 if I'm not making voice calls (which is the #1 battery suck for me). The "what used your battery" screen never shows the GPS as taking any significant portion...
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If there's no icon on the notification bar, then GPS should not be on and it should not be draining your battery. Check the 'battery usage' screen (if this exists on your version of Android) to see what's responsible for your battery drain. It is unlikely that disabling GPS will improve your battery life if you aren't using any apps that also use GPS, but with as many Android devices out there as there are, a bug is always possible. I'd encourage you to try and be scientific about it. If your version of
Re: (Score:3)
On Android, I can turn off all the "location" services anytime I'm not using GPS. Saves the battery from being eaten by GPS. Does iPhone give this option?
Yeah. You disable location services altogether. And individual apps cannot access your location unless you allow them to -- an alert shows up the first time they try. If you refuse, it's up to the app to figure out what to do without your location; no API will let it find the information.
Admittedly, if you ask Google Maps directions from A to B, Google came make a rather safe assumption that you're heading to B from A, even if you disallow it to access your precise location.
Re: (Score:1)
Admittedly, if you ask Google Maps directions from A to B, Google came
How nice for Google.
make a rather safe assumption that you're heading to B from A
I would assume the opposite.
Re: (Score:2)
I would assume the opposite.
Then you'd be wrong. Read more carefully.
Re: (Score:2)
Think more carefully. I would wager that there are a LOT more searches than trips, to the point that it's nowhere near a safe assumption that a search leads to a trip.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not the opposite.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:I don't know how iPhone works. (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is Google collecting data on where you've been. That's not to serve you. It's to serve the interests of Google.
It's one of the reasons Apple wouldn't accept Google's conditions for adding turn-by-turn navigation to the old Google Maps app.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I don't know how iPhone works. (Score:5, Informative)
SImple. You don't have a persistent ID associated with all requests from the app. The problem is not that a location is sent to the server as part of a request. It's that it's associated with a persistent ID and stored by Google.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:I don't know how iPhone works. (Score:4, Interesting)
"I want turn by turn directions, and for you to redirect me when I make a wrong turn, but I don't want you to know where I'm located or where I'm headed".
None of that follows from what I said.
Re: (Score:3)
Meh - seems like a ridiculous standard to hold any GPS provider to - "I want turn by turn directions, and for you to redirect me when I make a wrong turn, but I don't want you to know where I'm located or where I'm headed". I guess it could be implemented, but if that's the European standard, it seems a bit silly to me. Whatever.
It's not "I don't want you to know where I'm located". It's "I don't want you to store that the location I give you is mine. I also don't want you to store that the location I gave you today was given to you by the same person that gave you a different location yesterday, so that you can't correlate different locations".
Scenario (Score:3)
Meh - seems like a ridiculous standard to hold any GPS provider to - "I want turn by turn directions, and for you to redirect me when I make a wrong turn, but I don't want you to know where I'm located or where I'm headed".
Does it seem so odd to not want a GPS provider to know that you specifically go there every year on November 14th at 9am?
Or to have a profile that can predict exactly when you will be at work any day of the year after sampling your movements for a decade?
All of that is easy to do with wh
Re: (Score:2)
It's one of the reasons Apple wouldn't accept Google's conditions for adding turn-by-turn navigation to the old Google Maps app.
I'm assuming the reason for Apple's reason is that they want the access to the information for themselves. That said, making this stuff truly anonymous is a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the difference. They both make use of the data, but Google has the ability to build up individual user profiles from the data. Apple just knows what crowds are doing.
And it's not detail, nor a moral difference. It stems from their different business models.
Google's business model is targeted advertising. For several years, their every move is about profiling users to advertise to them.
Apple's business model is selling hardware. Their moves are about making the product more attractive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I don't know how iPhone works. (Score:4, Informative)
On Android, I can turn off all the "location" services anytime I'm not using GPS. Saves the battery from being eaten by GPS. Does iPhone give this option?
iPhone doesn't work quite like that. The GPS radio is never left on all the time.
There is an option to never allow it to come on of course, but even with that switched on, the GPS only gets activated when an app needs to use it and you allowed that app to.
It also shows a GPS icon in the title bar whenever an app is actively using it.
When an app first runs, the OS asks you if you want to allow location services for this app. If you click no the API won't return that data.
If you click yes, it adds it to the list of allowed GPS apps.
You can pull this list up under Settings at any time to remove an app after you have already allowed it.
Basically battery life only takes a hit when you see that icon, and that icon only shows up while in an app you allowed to use it. Once you flip back to springboard (aka the launcher) or into another app, it gets shut off again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Daughter? I'd guess text messaging, voice calls and Angry Birds type games, in that order.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
She doesn't play games. She's in college - tons of texting.
In that case it's probably texting, voice calls and Facebooking/Tweeting/etc. in no particular order. People associate phone calls with battery drain but for some reason it doesn't seem to occur to them that using the net work connection drains the battery. A lot of people also keep GPS and Bluetooth switched on for no particular reason and then complain about low battery life. Switching those on and off on an as-needed basis increased the battery life of my old iPhone 3GS very noticeably.
Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't me who spoke of it, it was the parent poster I replied to who claimed leaving GPS on drained battery life.
Re: (Score:1)
On Android, I can turn off all the "location" services anytime I'm not using GPS. Saves the battery from being eaten by GPS. Does iPhone give this option?
Yes.
It also gives you a list of apps that have read your location in the last five minutes as well as a list of every app that has ever read your location.
Apps are not allowed to read the GPS at all unless they have a cryptographic signature (signed by Apple) permitting them to do so —Apple does not give that signature out unless the developer actually needs it.
When your phone is first turned on, it asks if you want to allow the GPS to be used _at all_ and explains the privacy risk (one of them being
Re: (Score:2)
Jailbreak and install Protect My Privacy. Allows you to control access to personal data (location, contacts, device identifier, etc) on a per-app basis.
Re: (Score:1)
You define private=secret. I agree with your definition, but many in Europe consider "private" something that should be respected by others, even if they know (by which means is irrelevant for them). Example: If you are openly gay or lesbian, that's a "private" matter, and shouldn't change your chances for getting a job, adopting a child, or influence which ads you see. Let me repeat: I like your definition better than the other one, but I understand both sides of the argument.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
What, exactly, is stopping someone from keeping a list of people who ask for directions in person?
Re: (Score:1)
Common courtesy.
But also written laws making it illegal to create a database with personal information without obtaining a permit or falling into the few explicitly defined exceptions.
I.e. a collection of data is treated differently from any individual datum.
This is often the case in the US too - you can take a picture of a warship docked in a public harbor, but if you take lots of warship pictures, don't be surprised if you get apprehended and charged. The main difference is that the EU laws tend to prote
Re: (Score:2)
EU laws tend to protect the individual, while the US laws tend to protect those in power
...which is sad given U.S. polemic about freedom and liberty.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
They may well be willing to live with bad maps in exchange for higher privacy.
I fail to see how privacy has anything to do with providing good maps or directions? Isn't it just Graph Theory? Whether it is you or me that is asking for directions from point A to point B, the fact that you know stuff about me or not, does change the results... (or at least, it shouldn't)
Whatever happened to objectivity? Explain to me a scenario in which you get a different route from A to B than I the one get? Why would this ever be a good thing?
It appears to me that you have bought into the fact that i
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The freeway costs less in gasoline. You'll get about twice the mileage on the freeway as you do in town, depending on how many stop signs and traffic lights there are, how they're timed, and how you drive. When you're at that long red light you're sitting here getting 0 mpg.
My car has an in-dash mileage computer, I get 27-33 on the freeway and 13-20 in the city, depending on lights and traffic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:If you are bothered don't ask for directions. (Score:5, Informative)
*sigh* Does anyone even read the fucking summary any more?
The problem is that when you ask to "anonymous", your data is not actually anonymized. They can send directions for getting from A to B and then discard all personally identifying information, which is what a normal person would expect if they selected "anonymous".
Re: (Score:3)
which is what a normal person would expect if they selected "anonymous".
On Slashdot there are two models of anonymity.
1) AmiMoJo is a pseudonym. We don't know your real name, but we can tie together your posts to learn a fair amount about you.
2) Anonymous Coward. Every post is separate. You never know which ACs are the same person.
For Google maps, people would expect type 2. What they get is type 1.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not Belgian nor French.
And also unlikely the AC I replied to. Anyone mistyping p for m will very likely use a French or Belgian keyboard - on all other keyboards (including Dvorak and Maltron), the two are way too far apart.
Re: (Score:2)
It's their job to complain about privacy (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's _watch_dog, Biff. Watch-dog.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, I googled "mine dog" [wikipedia.org] to see what he was blathering about, and found myself educated. He wasn't saying what you thought he was saying.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and yet, I don't see them whining about Facebook who have outright breached European data protection laws time and time again without serious punishment.
Presumably in part, because of this sort of thing:
http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money-to-smear-google-audaciously/ [falkvinge.net]
Information Obsession (Score:3)
It is very clear that google are obsessed about knowing locations to enable them to tie and link you to services and advertising. AFAICT though the circle can only be completed if you are logged into google services on iOS â" then they can tie the ID to an account â" otherwise they will have to fall back to IP addresses which I am guessing they wouldn't do too routinely as it is not going to be all that reliable (shared addresses etc.).
Re:Information Obsession (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to say I was surprised at how insistent the new iOS application is at trying to determine your location. Every time you go into it it asks for location services to be turned on. You can skip by it, but that would be the type of setting that with other programs would be a choice only made once, not pestering every time.
It's also interesting how, when you click on a link in the newest versions of Google's iOS apps, they don't send you to Safari - they open up their own browsing window.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes you could be pulling it up just to look for a location, but most users these days are pulling these apps up for navigation purposes.
Not the same (Score:2)
It's a mapping application, why would it not request you turn on the location services every time you use it.
It should obviously ask at first. But if you said no, the app is notified, and to ask again every time when the user said no is pretty rude.
It's greatest functionality is only available when location services are on.
Knowing where YOU are on a map is for most people a secondary service. Primarily map applications are used to find where something else is on a map, then people can just follow roads to
Re: (Score:2)
It should obviously ask at first. But if you said no, the app is notified, and to ask again every time when the user said no is pretty rude.
Errm no. When you have an application where many fundamental features require location services to be turned on I fully expect it to ask you every time. It's good when it does it too. My girlfriend has location services turned off. Apps inability to randomly turn on GPS (and her not needing to remember to exit said app) is a real saver of battery life. Some of us are actually quite happy for apps to tell us when they may not work as we expect, even if we in the past have clicked no.
Also knowing where YOU ar