Google Illegally Tracking Android Users, According To New Complaint (arstechnica.com) 28
schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems has filed a complaint against Google in France alleging that the US tech giant is illegally tracking users on Android phones without their consent. Android phones generate unique advertising codes, similar to Apple's Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), that allow Google and third parties to track users' browsing behavior in order to better target them with advertising. In a complaint filed on Wednesday, Schrems' campaign group Noyb argued that in creating and storing these codes without first obtaining explicit permission from users, Google was engaging in "illegal operations" that violate EU privacy laws.
Noyb urged France's data privacy regulator to launch a probe into Google's tracking practices and to force the company to comply with privacy rules. It argued that fines should be imposed on the tech giant if the watchdog finds evidence of wrongdoing. "Through these hidden identifiers on your phone, Google and third parties can track users without their consent," said Stefano Rossetti, privacy lawyer at Noyb. "It is like having powder on your hands and feet, leaving a trace of everything you do on your phone -- from whether you swiped right or left to the song you downloaded." Last year, Schrems won a landmark case at Europe's highest court that ruled a transatlantic agreement on transferring data between the bloc and the US used by thousands of corporations did not protect EU citizens' privacy.
Noyb urged France's data privacy regulator to launch a probe into Google's tracking practices and to force the company to comply with privacy rules. It argued that fines should be imposed on the tech giant if the watchdog finds evidence of wrongdoing. "Through these hidden identifiers on your phone, Google and third parties can track users without their consent," said Stefano Rossetti, privacy lawyer at Noyb. "It is like having powder on your hands and feet, leaving a trace of everything you do on your phone -- from whether you swiped right or left to the song you downloaded." Last year, Schrems won a landmark case at Europe's highest court that ruled a transatlantic agreement on transferring data between the bloc and the US used by thousands of corporations did not protect EU citizens' privacy.
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Take Your Power Back! (Score:5, Interesting)
Google is too powerful to care about the people it hurts. That's why they are notorious for bad customer support when their algorithms decide to lock you out of your free accounts. And they have all this power because WE give it to them, by continuing to use their services and allow them to spy on us and make money on data about us.
People whine that they NEED Google. It isn't true:
1. Search the web with DuckDuckGo [duckduckgo.com]. It is every bit as good, but no spying. There is NO REASON not to use this instead!
2. Get free email from Outlook.com, which does not spy on you. If you don't like Microsoft, you can get dirt-cheap paid email from places like FastMail.com or Mailbox.org (or many others, though these two have excellent security features that you should also use, like hardware keys to sign in).
3. Ditch your Android phone and use one of these instead (listed in order of greatness):
a. A dumbphone. Talk, text, alarm and calendar, and also long-lasting and dirt cheap. You probably already spend most of your day next to internet-connected desktop and/or laptops. You will survive an hour or two without Internet while grocery shopping! If you think you cannot do this, then I suggest you have an unhealthy addiction that is harming you.
b. A linux-based smartphone such as Pine Phone [pine64.org] or Librem 5 [puri.sm]. Android was written by a corporation who treats you as their product. Linux was written by volunteers motivated by passion, with the intent of serving your needs.
c. iPhone. If you simply don't have the strength for either of the above options, at least Apple is less evil than Google.
4. And while you are at it, drop facebook like a hot potato. You can stay in touch with people you really care about through text, email, voice, in-person, etc. And you can get your news online through much better outlets that don't try to mind-control you and manipulate a country's democratic process.
Clear your mind, and this won't sound awful to you. Addiction is weakness. Take your power back.
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Linux was written by volunteers motivated by passion, with the intent of serving your needs.
That is a good one! If "serving your needs" is telling you to RTFM, than yeah, maybe.
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If you pay Microsoft, I guess they're willing to read the manual to you.
Re:Take Your Power Back! (Score:4, Interesting)
Google is too powerful to care about the people it hurts.
This is literally every corporation.
If you don't think Microsoft isn't spying on you then I have a bridge to sell you. Use ProtonMail. It costs a few bucks a year but it's secure.
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Well I just did some poking around, and I found this [maketecheasier.com] article that claims that neither Microsoft NOR Google scan your emails and use the content to target ads. It claims that Google used to, but stopped that in 2017. I don't know how trustworthy this source is, though. I have had a hard time finding definitive and current statements about this from either Google or Microsoft.
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From the App Privacy information here https://apps.apple.com/us/app/... [apple.com] Google may be linking Purchases, Contact info, User Content, Identifiers, Diagnostics, Location, Contacts, Search History, Usage Data and Other Data when you use the Gmail App.
So, they definitely reserve the right to your "User Content" and "Other Data". But even if they don't use it all the other information that they collect and link with information they get from Google Search, trackers all over the internet, YouTube, Google Maps, An
Re: Take Your Power Back! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Take Your Power Back! (Score:4, Informative)
1. Search the web with DuckDuckGo [duckduckgo.com]. It is every bit as good, but no spying. There is NO REASON not to use this instead!
I have DDG as my default search engine on all my browsers and devices.
That said, I have to repeat almost 2/3 of my searches on Google, because DDG's results are sub-par for non-trivial queries.
Re:Take Your Power Back! (Score:4, Funny)
What's the most common expression DDG users type into the search field? !g
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I have DDG as my default search engine on all my browsers and devices.
That said, I have to repeat almost 2/3 of my searches on Google, because DDG's results are sub-par for non-trivial queries.
I used to have the same experience. But my feeling is that the DuckDuckGo search results have improved tremendously over the last couple of years to the point that I only occasionally need to redo the search using other search engines.
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You seem to assume that the people who use Google's services fro free are their customers ...
You also assume that the other services you recommend don't spy on you or track you ... some explicitly say they don't, but many you assume they don't ...
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Please consider yourself invited to publish your own list of recommended services that give some kind of statement of non-tracking. And also any recent evidence you have that my recommendations are doing tracking where I have implied they don't.
These things change over time, of course, and so any list like this must change over time, as well.
Austrian government budget shortfall? (Score:2)
Thanx Max (Score:3)
Why not just ASK the consumer, Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
What irritates me the most is that I cannot target advertising to my current needs. Google, you don't allow me to explicitily and expressly tell you what I want to buy.
Look, I'm on /., so naturally I'm into woodworking, metalworking, 3-D printers, that kind of stuff. Show me those ads. Electronic parts? Let me see what's new. Maybe I intend to build a new deck next month. Show me ads for decking materials, special offers on the requisite tools, that sort of stuff. No problemo viewing those, if you give me some way of telling you what I want to see. Preferably in advance. Why inundate me with building material ads that aren't pertinent to decks after I've already built the thing? You're just annoying me and scamming the advertisers. The latter is what this is really about, isn't it Google?
I almost never see ads for stuff I'd actually consider buying, or at least find interesting to view. If I buy the same brand of toothpaste I've been using for decades off Amazon, I get a thousand ads for different brands of toothpaste. Sorry, not interested, not switching. If I buy my niece a pair of Ugg boots she wanted for her birthday (what the hell are those anyway--thank god she gave me a direct link), suddenly Google decides my house is full of young women wanting fashion items (if only) and I'm inundated with female clothing ads for the next month. Just stop it, Google--you know I'm not female, and you should know I'm not interested. You've invested billions in machine learning. Why not teach your machines to learn something? If I just bought laser toner, guess what Google...I don't need any more right now, so I don't need to see ads for it now. It's too late. Just stop it.
If you want to target ads at me, Google, I'll be happy to tell you exactly what ads I want to see. No need to track me. Just ask me. I'll be happier to view the ads, and the advertisers will get a higher rate of return. What about it, Google?
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In any case, this valiant effort by Schrem will once again go to waste. Google will shrug off any fines as cost of doing business, amend its ToS and make the user click-through on them without an option to decline. Exactly as it does today and exactly the way it has done it every time so far.
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Exactly. Mr. Schrems is on the wrong side of the equation. Google won't care until those paying for the ads decide there has to be a better way. Sadly, if some company does come along with that better way (say consumer-choice targeted ads like I described above) Google is likely to buy them and that company will "disappear" as fast as an FBI informant at a Mob convention.
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It looks like you've you just bought phone. Here are 10 cheaper and better ones. Would you like some salt with that rub?
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s/phone/a phone
Past giving a shit (Score:2)
When is the Apple suit? (Score:2)
iOS also uses an advertising ID and it does the exact same thing.
In neither case is the ID tied to you, in any way.
What's more, Android notifies you of this when you set up the device, and you have to confirm it. It's literally impossible to not know this is happening.
Why France? (Score:2)
According to the article
According to people familiar with the latest complaint, Noyb chose to approach the French data watchdog because its legal system is well suited to handling complaints under the European ePrivacy directive.
No Shit (Score:2)