Google Now Allows Users To Auto-Delete Their Location History (blog.google) 87
Google today began rolling out location history deletion tools to Android and iOS, giving users a relatively simple way to limit the scope of Google's location tracking. Users can only choose between deleting data after three or 18 months. In a blog post, Google wrote: Choose a time limit for how long you want your activity data to be saved -- 3 or 18 months -- and any data older than that will be automatically deleted from your account on an ongoing basis. These controls are coming first to Location History and Web & App Activity and will roll out in the coming weeks.
"Deleted" (Score:4, Insightful)
Deleted from your account does not mean it is deleted from everywhere....
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I can understand it gets it when I might have the Map app open, but other than that how is it getting location data, from iOS phones?
I do at times do web searching with google on the phone, but it always prompts me to allow it to use location data and I say no...does it still somehow get my location data?
I don't do social networks, so no FB or twitter, etc on my phone...so, does Google still get location info on me?
Re: "Deleted" (Score:1)
You log into your google account on your phone? Its the only way to use the Play Store.
Actually its not, though. I have an app installed called apkextractor. I log into google on a tablet that never leaves home. Most Play Store apps can be installed on the tablet, then apkextractor can be used to turn the app into a portable *.apk file installer to move to the phone on an sd card.
I have never logged into a google account on my present phone.
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Stale old data is probably worthless anyway.
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Sure, but often its not where you were 18 months ago that matters, its where you are today.
If Google wanted privacy, they'd implement a feature that hid your location data until 3 months had passed, so those old photos can be geotagged without risking everyone looking knowing that you're there right now.
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If the data was analyzed and any "metadata" saved forever, deleting the data is effectively irrelevant.
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This is all just smoke and mirrors anyway. Many of the places you go, you'll have been in the last 3 days, so it's still valuable tracking for them.
Re:"Deleted" (Score:4, Interesting)
Deleted from your account does not mean it is deleted from everywhere....
Yes, it does.
Both because to tell you it was being deleted and then not delete it would almost certainly be a violation of the FTC consent decree, and because I know people on the takeout/deletion team and they're fanatical about this stuff... it will be gone for good.
My guess (and this is only a guess, but it's an educated one) is that since Google always encrypts all user data at rest, they've probably set up a system of rolling encryption keys, so when it's time to delete the data they don't actually have to go wipe backups, etc., just delete the keys.
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Say, Google said they deleted it and they did. After sharing the data with another Alphabet unit of course, who will be keeping it.
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Wait... somebody check if our Spock has a beard....
Re: Wait (Score:1)
Nobody ever said that, and if the product you use says so, they're just straight up lying to you.
I mean, if you try to turn on High Accuracy GPS (i.e. wifi and cell assist), it warns you it's doing exactly that.
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Your location is always your mom's basement.
Nuh uhhh... I'm in yo mom's "basement".
I have a better idea (Score:2)
Don't collect it in the first place!!
Don't offer false choices which disallows any private location use without Google getting a copy.
Don't transmit location data to Google even when you explicitly disable it.
I will assume deletion "from your account" != "from Google's servers"
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Don't transmit location data to Google even when you explicitly disable it.
As much as I would like to do this, I live in Houston and drive with Google maps on at all times. I have lost track of the number of times it has re-routed me around an accident or other congestion delay and saved 45 minutes or more of drive time. It kind of needs my location for that to work.
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Informative)
I have lost track of the number of times it has re-routed me around an accident or other congestion delay and saved 45 minutes or more of drive time. It kind of needs my location for that to work.
It needs your current location to do this. It doesn't need your location history, which is what we're talking about.
I wonder if there's a hack to this new setting which would let us set the time period at one day - or one hour?
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Yes for accidents it needs current location data. For longer trips Google uses historically aggregated data to route you around suspected areas which may end up with traffic by the time you get there. It also uses this to make traffic predictions for if you need to select a future leave / arrive time.
Google also uses historical data in it's reasoning of whether to divert you off the current route. I.e. It won't route your along a route that is suspects will get busy (usually due to every idiot taking it whe
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Also, if you've ever gotten into your car and glanced at your iPhone and seen predictions about where it thinks you're about to go and what route to take, that's based on your location history, too. (Admittedly, AFAIK, Apple is dong that, not Google, but you get the point.)
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I have lost track of the number of times it has re-routed me around an accident or other congestion delay and saved 45 minutes or more of drive time. It kind of needs my location for that to work.
It needs your current location to do this. It doesn't need your location history, which is what we're talking about.
I wonder if there's a hack to this new setting which would let us set the time period at one day - or one hour?
That already exists: Just disable location history. This is separate from disabling location services, for exactly this reason. (Recall that people getting confused because these are separate settings caused a hullabaloo a few months ago when some reporter realized that turning off location history only turned off history, not all location services.)
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Informative)
It kind of needs my location for that to work.
It most certainly does not!
Your local device needs your location for that to work, but Google absolutely does not. They could simply send the locations of major congestions without knowing where you are, and allow all the routing to take place on your local device with that knowledge. It is not an unreasonable amount of data to transmit for a whole area.
We have fallen into the trap of believing that we must give all our data to ginormous ad agencies for our devices to do anything at all. We have lurched from monetization to monetization without a thought for our privacy.
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It kind of needs my location for that to work.
It most certainly does not!
Your local device needs your location for that to work, but Google absolutely does not. They could simply send the locations of major congestions without knowing where you are, and allow all the routing to take place on your local device with that knowledge. It is not an unreasonable amount of data to transmit for a whole area.
Given no location info, google would have to send you locations of major congestions worldwide... think that through for a second
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Google used to do this. It resulted in you taking a worse path as traffic quickly built in those other areas you were routed through. People started complaining when Google stopped routing them around traffic issues, but the reality is historical data is very valuable in making a decision about the current traffic conditions.
Do I take the side street, or does it always get messed up when the main road does?
Do I take the other highway or will I just hit a building peak hour jam that will occur when I get to
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I disable all of this shit through Account/Privacy Settings.
+1 Funny
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Yes, turn off location history.
It's already been established that Google has two sets of location history and still collects location history even when you turn it off. It's just not the "transparent" location history that you yourself can access. Even if you have GPS turned off.
They still store your location and every wifi signal you've passed.
OK... Google's rolling this out but... (Score:2)
... how long before mobile phone companies get around to making it available to their customers? My phone hasn't seen an Android upgrade since last August---and that was to 8.0.0.
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If you use Android you should assume the tracking Google does goes much deeper. Not endorsing IPhone, but if you worry about Google do not use Android.
I worry about Google AND Apple. Honestly, I don't know that one is better than the other. They're both tracking everything you do and everywhere you go.
Google to kick your dog only on Tuesdays (Score:3)
It boggles my mind that we are not scandalized by such violation of privacy. We should be demanding politicians dismantle Google and bury all of it at sea in a lead-lined barrels. Imagine how harmful such prevasive tracking would be in hands of Stasi or Soviet Politburo. There would be a whole lot more dead people and many awful regimes would still be standing.
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What violation of privacy? Google explicitly tells you it's collecting the information and explicitly gives you the opt out when you first start your phone. Hell right now Google sends out emails with information it knows about your history. Including how many hours you walked, ran, drove, or whatnot, how many new unique places you visited, this month, etc.
Equating them to the Stasi shows either incredibly ignorance or a complete breakdown of mental function. Pull yourself together man.
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It boggles my mind that we are not scandalized by such violation of privacy.
What violation of privacy? If you don't want location history to be kept, just turn it off. You had to turn it on in the first place. The new thing here is just a feature that lets you leave it on, but have it automatically go away after a while.
Personally, I really like location history. My Google Maps timeline has an almost complete record of everywhere I've been for the last 5+ years, which I've found useful many, many times. It's "almost" complete because a couple of times I got a new phone and f
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Deletion only applies to user side (Score:3)
The location metadata is still illegally stored on the G databases, and is subject to court orders.
Now, if you used Firefox as your browser, and turned off certain things ...
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Citation required. I mean if it is what you're saying that Google is opening themselves to be royally fucked by the EU privacy laws.
So, present evidence of your claim that the company is breaking the law.
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Or we can just wait for the inevitable lawsuit that I'm not allowed to tell you the details about, the one they'll lose too.
Look, we've all seen the corrective actions to date.
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I know, Google's CEO murdered someone in the street the other day. The only evidence I will present you with is: "They've broken a law before, and the phrase 'wait and see'"
I hope you realise how stupid my comment is and use it as a self reflection exercise on the "evidence" you just presented.
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The location metadata is still illegally stored on the G databases, and is subject to court orders.
Cite? I strongly, strongly doubt that this is true. Google would have to be incredibly stupid to store user information illegally, particularly while under an FTC consent decree that lets the FTC come in and regularly audit stuff. Plus it would be extremely out of character for Google employees. I guarantee that if someone discovered internally that that sort of thing was happening and the response were anything but "Fix it right now", the result would be a howl of internal complaints and discussions...
Saving Space (Score:3)
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Of course. Think of what is required for location services: Any data older than 3 months could be suspect. Businesses change, traffic changes, roads change, etc. So why the 18 months? Well from a subset of people you still want seasonal data to help your algorithms along. While I don't see any evidence of seasonally adjusted data in Google results it stands to reason that Google may know in the coming month traffic in my country will be lower than the past few as people take off on vacation and there's a po
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The way I see it, Google has decided that they can save some money by saving some space, and that 3 months of data will get just about all the relevant data they need from you.
Nah. Storage is very, very cheap. Especially the way Google does it, with tiers of different access speeds. Deleting data is more expensive than keeping it.
How about 'none' (Score:1)
For just toggling that horseshit off, and only enabling it on a minimum when needed, as needed. Otherwise off. Disable JavaScript. Use duckduckgo. Pollute the datastream with false data, etc, etc., etc.
These are the new ways to protect your privacy. Not some fucking 'tools' from some fucking company.
Wifi passwords (Score:2)
When will Google let me delete the WiFi passwords it's remembered/sync'd from various devices, apps, setup processes (Google Home), etc.?
Google seems to pretend this isn't a thing.
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i cannot look it up on a android that already knows it.
Yeah just so you know you CAN look up saved passwords on an android phone. I mean it's not out there and easy to find or anything but it is a possibility.
/data/misc/wifi/ the file is labeled wpa_supplicant.conf.
Basically its in
So yeah you do need to have a file browser to read it but it is available to find.
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It's not the file browser that's the problem, but the fact that you need a rooted device.
I had root on my previous devices, but it's too much of a pain these days.I bricked my present phone at some point (took me half a day to recover) and there are too many useful apps that won't work on a rooted phone and that are quite good at detecting root even if you think you hid it.
Great, now can we get this for email? (Score:2)
"delete" (Score:1)
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Of course they delete it.
Meanwhile the NSA says it doesn't need to do its own warrantless domestic spying any longer.
Sorry, but an NSL doesn't allow for elaboration.
Re: "delete" (Score:1)
And all those memories will be lost forever (Score:2)
Like farts in a hurricane.
Sure, Mr Google, I trust you!