Police Are Filing Warrants For Android's Vast Store Of Location Data (theverge.com) 158
The Verge is reporting about a man who robbed a Bank of America office in Romana, California. A person, named Timothy Graham, matching his profile robbed another bank in November. The investigators, however, didn't have enough evidence to prove that Graham was indeed the same person who robbed the other bank as well. The cops contacted Google and utilised a feature of Maps that builds a comprehensive history of where a user has been -- information that is proved valuable to police and advertisers alike. The publication claims that in the past few months, police have used this Maps' feature in several other instances as well. From the report: Investigators had already gone to Graham's wireless carrier, AT&T, but Google's data was more precise, potentially placing Graham inside the bank at the time the robbery was taking place. "Based on my training and experience and in consultation with other agents," an investigator wrote, "I believe it is likely that Google can provide me with GPS data, cell site information and Wi-fi access points for Graham's phone." [...] It's not clear whether either of the public warrants were filled. No Google-based evidence was presented in Graham's trial, and the other suspect plead guilty before a full case could be presented. Still, there's no evidence of a legal challenge to either warrant. There's also reason to think the investigators' legal tactic would have been successful, since Google's policy is to comply with lawful warrants for location data. While the warrants are still rare, police appear to be catching on to the powerful new tactic, which allows them to collect a wealth of information on the movements and activities of Android users, available as soon as there's probable cause to search.
Damn (Score:1)
Now they'll know that I don't get out much.
Disable Location History (Score:1)
Clear your existing history, then disable Location History for your Google account to prevent future tracking. I also disable High-Accuracy Location on my phone itself, although that's just because I don't want to send Google near-by wifi networks and cell towers, just use classic GPS.
Re:Disable Location History (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, if you're more likely to be falsely accused than actually commit a crime.... You might come out ahead by outsourcing your alibi.
On the gripping hand (Score:4, Insightful)
Leave your own cell phone at home, and use a disposable cell phone while you are out engaging in wrong-doing. Then even if you are correctly accused of a crime, you have an alibi...
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If it's at home, it's a pretty weak alibi.
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I send my phone on a country-wide trip once a month or so. I'm in New Brunswick and I send it to an invalid address in British Columbia.
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It would be pretty easy to reconstruct that and see that it's a mail delivery route. Especially all the time it spent in post offices and shipping depots.
Re:On the gripping hand (Score:5, Funny)
Who's to say I'm not mailing myself in a huge box?
Stronger then (Score:3)
It's way better than "phone drove to the scene of the crime" alibi.
But if you really think it's so weak, tape your phone to the underside of your neighbors car before he or she leaves for the day.
The main problem you'd have there is that the traffic camera data would not show your car, but you could claim you were in the trunk...
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If it's at home, it's a pretty weak alibi.
You don't actually have the slightest clue about the judicial system, do you?
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You've never left a phone at home to charge?
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It's not absolute proof but you and others seem to forget that whole "reasonable doubt" factor present in so many cases... Does a phone at home help build reasonable doubt? Of course it does.
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leaving it at home IMPLIES you're at home
Not exactly. Leaving it at home means you either forgot it, left it at home to charge, OR you're at home, or you're a smart enough criminal to not want your location tracked. Assuming you didn't commit the crime, it actually going somewhere with you will help you remember where you were that day. Not only does the phone help prove it, but it will also jog your memory and help you reconstruct your day.
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When did that ever happen? TNG characters doing anything sketchy, I mean?
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Leave your own cell phone at home, and use a disposable cell phone while you are out engaging in wrong-doing. Then even if you are correctly accused of a crime, you have an alibi...
Yup, that's how you do it. Uhh, I mean, that's what I hear.
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Leave your own cell phone at home, and use a disposable cell phone while you are out engaging in wrong-doing. Then even if you are correctly accused of a crime, you have an alibi...
Why even bother to take a phone to an armed robbery, unless you're planning to escape via Uber?
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When the location evidence exonerates you, the investigator can arrange to lose it or forget about it so the prosecutor does not have to turn it over as Brady evidence.
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They can't arrange for Google to lose it, can they? Bring it to court yourself and don't leave it up to the prosecution.
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I suspect the prosecution has a lot more pull getting evidence out of Google than a defendant does.
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Still close to none.
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Yes, this will work for sure!
I'm sure that Google doesn't keep a separate copy as they might have legal requirement to produce it. NSL and all.
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Sorry, but NSLs trump and waives any and all lawsuits.
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And if they got an NSL that told them not to delete the data? Say 5 years ago?
What then?
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Yes, after the first time Google said they didn't have the data.
Are you fucking serious about fighting an NSL?
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Here's an NSL that requires all data from 'inception' of email account.
https://www.wired.com/wp-conte... [wired.com]
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Aehmm... High-Accuracy-Location IS GPS.
It's the wifi/cell tower location that is less accurate, but doesn't need to power an extra device (GPS-Receiver) in your phone.
Stallman was right (Score:5, Interesting)
So in a way, this is old news. However, the police and government tracking has gotten a lot better over the years.
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Don't forget the cooperation by Google/AT&T/Verizon/Apple/etc/etc/etc.
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I have always assumed his rats nest hair and frizzy beard were fake... does he take them off when he travels so he can move entire unrecognized?
Dear god man... Stallman is new to the party... we've had telephone paranoia dating back to even before Kevin Mitnick. I'm almost sure there was even something related to it in Sneakers the movie.
Please never given Stallman
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I know. Can you imagine how awkward it would be for your phone to start ringing to the tune of ducktales while robbing someone?
This'll work... (Score:2)
...because nobody ever heard of burn phones.
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I know you were being sarcastic, but petty criminals evidently haven't.
Making it so much easier to erase you with (Score:1)
I do wonder how long until the belief in the unquestionable veracity of third-party data will be utilized to get rid of some political undesirables.
Anybody surprised? (Score:2)
Why is this a surprise ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google practices a two sided market strategy. On one side they offer free services (search, email, maps, etc) to users in return for collecting info. On the other side they monetize that info through targeted advertising, delivering ads. They do not provide personally identifiable information to advertisers because that would destroy their business model, they need to be the gatekeeper between advertisers and users so they can collect their fee.
If ever the phrase "users are the product not the customer" ever applied it applies to Google. But hey, they have a friendly motto "do no evil", and they are not a three letter government agency so its all OK right?
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First Google dropped the "do no evil" motto years ago publicly.
Any partnerships with state-owned (government) enterprises at the time? :-)
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First Google dropped the "do no evil" motto years ago publicly.
Cite? As a Google employee, AFAIK the motto still exists and is still important. Also, it's actually "Don't be evil".
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Exactly. These are Fourth Amendment warrants, not police state NSLs.
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If they suspected him first and got a warrant, then, yeah, it's OK.
Yeah, what the police are doing is fine. Proper warrant in a proper context.
Its what Google is doing that I question, that Google has such data in the first place.
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Have you ever gotten a notification icon that you are near some store where you have a loyalty card in Google Wallet? I have. They collect *TONS* of information, and then sell it to whomever will pay.
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>If they suspected him first and got a warrant, then, yeah, it's OK.
Agreed. With probable cause and a warrant, no problem. The guy "agreed" (although probably not really) to have all this tracking and information stored about him. The government, going through proper due process, can have access to it.
But the problem is that it won't stop there. The next step is they will submit a request for a list of ALL PEOPLE who have been near the point of interest they are investigating and just start making ev
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It's a surprise because Google Maps isn't always running on our phones.
Location services is core OS functionality, Maps is just one user of that functionality/api. Another user of that functionality is targeted advertising, how could this be at all surprising given that its from Google?
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What is a surprise is they don't seem to realise how inaccurate it is. Google maps had me going to Singapore when I never left my home country and repeatedly visiting all sorts of places I had never come within kilometres of. Even regular routes can become rather zigzaggy by hundreds of metres, rather then following the actual path. It seems relatively accurate, maybe about 80 percent of the time and the inaccuracies can be hundreds of metres, tens of kilometres and tens of thousands of kilometres (I am re
Note to self. (Score:2)
If I ever get a life of crime leave phone at alibi locations
Warrants .... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a great idea (Score:1)
Don't rob a bank or do anything illegal. What a crazy idea right?
See where you've been (Score:1)
Also handy for alibis. (Score:2)
These things work both ways. For instance, if you are planning to commit a crime, then leave your phone somewhere else, or with a friend. Voila! Now you have an alibi. "I was at such-and-such. I was with so-and-so. The location history on my phone proves it."
Dangerous precedent... (Score:4, Insightful)
So let's follow the rabbit a little bit further down this hole: If the police manage to set a precedent that cell phone location data can be used to establish the location of a given suspect to a particular crime, then what happens when the criminals start leaving their cell phones at home? Does that now qualify as an alibi?
Is our legal system really ready to go that far down the hole?
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So let's follow the rabbit a little bit further down this hole: If the police manage to set a precedent that cell phone location data can be used to establish the location of a given suspect to a particular crime, then what happens when the criminals start leaving their cell phones at home? Does that now qualify as an alibi?
Is our legal system really ready to go that far down the hole?
It just becomes one more data point. A witness can lie, and physical evidence can be deceiving. But a lot of good evidence can overwhelm a small piece of circumstantial evidence. The fact that the suspects cell phone places him at home, will probably have investigators look somewhere else for a period of time, but if all of the other evidence points to this being the true perpetrator of the crime, they'll still convict.
The real rabbit hole will be when someone steals your phone, commits a crime, and then re
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It's not PROOF of your presence. However the scenario where someone is murdered in the middle of nowhere and you can track that a person was there at the time gives a reason to pursue that person. Of course it may be a dead end, and it certainly shouldn't be enough evidence on its own, but it will provide leads when nothing else will.
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Go one step further: Steal or clone someone's cell phone, then rob the bank in order to pin the crime on them.
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No, then it means that the prosecutor can show premeditation, the criminal falsified evidence, and the criminal can be further charged with conspiracy. Either that or the investigator f
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I see an application here for the Phone Drone.
Check it out yourself -- Maps - Timeline (Score:1)
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Go into Google Maps, click the menu bar, and then open up "Your timeline". It has a calendar display, and you can click on any date in the past year and a half (on mine, at least), and it pretty much tells you where you went, and how long you were there. It's spooky. I mean, we all knew the technology was here, but it's another thing to realize that they've actually done it. Even when you aren't navigating, even if you've disabled hi-res location services. Plus, they have a nice UI for telling you they did all this, implying that nothing's wrong with this picture.
Gee. When I open up "Your timeline", I get an option to turn on Location History, with "Turn On" and "Learn More" buttons. There's also a "SKIP" link, that when clicked, displays a map of an nowhere close to my location, along with the legend, "No visited places".
Not even tempted to turn on this feature.
Don't bring your phone (Score:2)
this is the sort of story (Score:2)
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that makes me glad I use a dumb phone.
Even a dumb phone tracks you as your phone does signal its handoffs from one cell tower to the next as you move around (even if you're not calling anyone).
It may not be the pinpoint accuracy you'd get from google but it's easy to follow your movements down the freeway, through town, or even in less populated areas.
Google Maps vs "Android location services" (Score:2)
The article is talking about a feature in Google Maps, that seems to be enabled by default on some Android phones. It stores your location data. You can turn it off. You can also delete stored location data in your Google account settings.
A much more interesting way to track people would be the Android location service itself. In order to get precise location data, all phones (including Apple, Microsoft, ...) will scan nearby wifi access points and cell towers and upload this information to the designated l
Tip to criminals (Score:2)
1. Leave cell phone at home during crime.
2. Profit.
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Better yet - you go out and do your crime, while you have someone else in a car with tinted screens drive around to paint a big fat middle-finger on the map for the police to find...?
Re:Who's more incompentent? (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have to be using maps. Location data is used for all sorts of behind the scenes functionality (updating Google Now, Showing Android Pay cards for store locations you're in, etc.).
Everywhere you've been if you have Location History turned on:
https://www.google.com/maps/ti... [google.com]
Re:Who's more incompentent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thing is, if Google's Location History is off... that page shows nothing on the map and reports "your location history is off - only you can see it".
But doesn't say "there is no location history". And, based on other Google experiences, I suspect the information is still there on Google's servers since they don't seem to actually delete anything - they just have a "deleted" flag which makes the information unavailable to you... except when they screw up (which I've seen).
So it's quite possible law enforcement can still get that data from Google, even if you have location history turned off.
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Thing is, if Google's Location History is off...
If he was smart enough to turn off location history, then he would be able to get a better job than "bank robber". In the movies there are a lot of criminal masterminds, but IRL, most crooks are pretty stupid.
Anyway, as long as the cops go to a judge and get a warrant, I don't see the problem here.
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But doesn't say "there is no location history". And, based on other Google experiences, I suspect the information is still there on Google's servers since they don't seem to actually delete anything - they just have a "deleted" flag which makes the information unavailable to you... except when they screw up (which I've seen).
Cite? From what I've seen (from the inside), Google is pretty careful to actually delete data that's users don't want retained. This is actually a hard thing to do completely since there are backup tapes, etc., but it can be done by encrypting everything with user-specific keys and then deleting the keys for the data that isn't supposed to be kept.
Re:Who's more incompentent? (Score:5, Informative)
Cite?
Sure.
For several years before our university decided to go with Google Apps, our department had its own Google Apps domain. After the university finally deployed its own version, one of our (non-computing) staff decided she wanted her department calendar moved over to the university system - so we did the export-then-import thing, only using Google's own tools. Unfortunately, she worked closely with several other staff who did not want to move their calendars, and for whatever reason they had trouble with the concept that she was on a different domain... so after a month or so, she gave up and moved back to the department calendar. We went in and deleted all her calendar info on the university Google Apps system, following Google's instructions (it's been several years, but I think it even involved deleting the calendar) - afterwards I verified that her university calendar was empty of all entries (this was important because I wanted to be sure there was no confusion regarding which of her calendars was the correct one for everyone to use).
Fast forward several months. Our department decides to ditch our own Apps domain, and go with the University system. So for each staffer we go through the export-then-import dance... which worked perfectly fine, except for that single staffer who'd made the aborted move before. There was nothing showing on her university Google calendar, but none of the longer-standing repeating events would move over for her - Google would start to import then complain about "existing duplicates" (which were not visible on the target calendar!). Eventually I solved the problem by loading the iCal file and incrementing a particular counter value corresponding to each event, which made it look like we were importing a newer version of the events - then the import happily worked.
I am open to alternative explanations as to why the importer was finding duplicates where none should have existed - but it sure seems like they never actually deleted anything, but just hid it all from the user.
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The minimal requirement for this bug to occur would be that there was a separate table storing the metadata about the calendar entries. The data for each entry would have been unavailable, as it had been deleted, but there would still be a record of the entry having been there.
Suffice it to say, it can be really difficult to completely delete data from a complex computer system. Hopefully they've fixed the bug and the calendar entries are completely deleted these days.
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It sounds like all of that pre-dated the effort to make sure that everything that's supposed to be deleted is really gone. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that your diagnosis is reasonably accurate, but things have changed since then.
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Given what you've said, at some point I should probably try it all again. It wouldn't be all that much work to do so... if they have fixed it, it would be good to know.
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Given what you've said, at some point I should probably try it all again. It wouldn't be all that much work to do so... if they have fixed it, it would be good to know.
If you do, I'd be interested to hear the result. And if it's still broken, I'll file a bug.
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Google Calendar is supposed to sync to phones and other devices. For that to work, deletions have to be logged so that the synching tool knows if they need to delete the event on your phone, too, after you deleted the event on the web calendar or if it is a new event in your phone that needs to be created on the Google servers. That's why deleting events only marks them as deleted. Since a while, access to those "deleted" items is at least possible using the "trashcan" feature. Before that, they couls be ac
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And, based on other Google experiences
Why base it on some crap like that instead of directly asking the guys at XDA who have monitored the phone and confirmed that location data not only isn't sent but GPS isn't on which means the location data that Google may have in your tin-foil-hat scenario is no better than the location data every phone company already has.
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Carrying tracking device that records and uploads your position in time to internet servers can result in convictions for bank robbery. News at 11.
Christ people, you shouldn't carry a fucking cell phone (even dumb ones get tracked by the towers) if you are robbing banks or committing major crimes where your presence can be verified with this data.
If you are committing major felonies leave the phone at home. You don't really need it enough to take that risk.
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"If you are committing major felonies leave the phone at home."
There is the concept of the calculating, premeditated criminal with a master plan. I guess this type of crime is out there, and this type of criminal has that option. But so many crimes are stupid and thoughtless. Crimes of passion where reason isn't involved, or a situation where crime is a response to accidental or random circumstances. Then there are crazy people. Lots of crime isn't part of an organized plan. IJS.
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Re: Ha Ha (Score:1)
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Don't mistake a lack of comprehensive user data (in an easy to interpret format) as an intentional protection by Apple.
Protection? LOL!
iPads and MacBooks both nag you to enable location tracking and to use the "Find my Mac" feature.
(You'll get a much richer user experience if all the apps can provide location-specific information...honest!)
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I'll keep my iPhone any day. At least they try to protect my privacy.
Against a court order? LOL!
Clue: Apple has to comply - or be in contempt of court.
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They had probable cause prior to you stepping out as well. You exist, therefor they have probable cause anymore it seems.
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LOL at outside your house.
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I think there's a point around age 21 that it's no longer "my house" as opposed to "my parent's house" or possibly "my childhood home". If you're still living in your parents house after 21, you should be paying rent and utilities and pay to have your ow
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I was more laughing at the implication that he had privacy in his own home (whatever that may be).
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Open source (well, sort of) means that we know our Android devices are tracking our every move. Apple isn't defending your privacy. They're defending your false beliefs that they don't track you.
That said, so long as I can use the fact that my phone wasn't at the scene of the crime as an alibi, I'm all for the government having such data (after getting a warranty, of course). That way we only have to worry about the criminals with IQ scores of 10 or better.
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It's a funny old world isn't it?
It turns out that if I want privacy and a company that will actually fight law enforcement to defend it's device's privacy features, I should get an iPhone
You really think Apple is allowed to disobey court orders?
If this data gets results for Police then you can expect the first legal test of your theory Real Soon Now.
The subpoenas and search warrants will start arriving at Apple thick and fast. They'll complain and make a few noises, sure, but will they go to prison for contempt of court rather than hand over your data? I wouldn't bet any money on it.
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Extremely inaccurate. (Score:3)
Every single project from Google exists for gathering data. This means that things like self-driving car data, traffic information gathering, etc... they are all gathered by Google at all times. You are willing to buy Android and use Google maps because it makes your life better... you're willing to pay for the features supplied by collecting location data from other peoples phone
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Google is first and foremost a data warehouse who sells data directly or indirectly of every type to anyone willing to pay or it.
This is completely incorrect. Google does not sell user data. Google's targeted advertising model is about using data to target ads; actually giving the data to advertisers would lower its value to Google, among other problems.
Also, Google isn't fundamentally an advertising company. It's a technology company. Its largest products are monetized through advertising, but not all. In fact the percentage of its revenue that comes from advertising is declining, and I expect that trend to continue.
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That doesn't make sense. I buy books for reading, but don't burn them when I'm done. If I collect data on you to use in advertising, it's quite likely that I'll want to use that same data again later, or in aggregate.
It doesn't require some nefarious purpose to see why advertisers (which Google certainly is) keep data around. Storing data is also cheap, so there's not a lot of incentive to figure out which parts aren't worth