Google admits it tracked user location data even when the setting was turned off

[mynameisjuan]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

Google is selling your data to those companies though........

I am pretty sure they are selling the data as a compiled list, I think there was a news article a year or two ago from Troy Hunt on what is sold, and its just anonymous data. If its not still dont give a fuck. 

 

Privacy is not a thing anymore and never will be again. You are everywhere at all times. Even if you never use technology again you can and are still tracked in some way, shape or form. 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, mynameisjuan said:

Privacy is not a thing anymore and never will be again.

Well sure if you were in charge.

[AresKrieger]

Just now, mynameisjuan said:

technology again you can and are still tracked in some way, shape or form.

Not that I agree with the apple fanboy but that statement is just incorrect, if it were correct it wouldn't have taken so long to find bin laden

[FratStar]

31 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

about your rights isn't fear mongering

This isn't about rights. If it was a right then tell all the carriers to not log that info, and  911 operators shouldn't either but we aren't given that choice, so why crucify Google and not the other parties involved?

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, FratStar said:

so why crucify Google and not the other parties involved?

Because its fun?

[ARikozuM]

2 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

Not that I agree with the apple fanboy but that statement is just incorrect, if it were correct it wouldn't have taken so long to find bin laden

This reminds of those sitcoms, like Scrubs, that said bin Laden was in Pakistan all along before the military even found him. 

[AresKrieger]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

This reminds of those sitcoms, like Scrubs, that said bin Laden was in Pakistan all along before the military even found him. 

Well tbf they suspected he was in Pakistan for a while before they actually found him but that doesn't give them an exact location just a general idea

[mr moose]

15 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

Not that I agree with the apple fanboy but that statement is just incorrect, if it were correct it wouldn't have taken so long to find bin laden

 

Being tracked in one form or another does not mean they know the exact location of a person in a cave  in a desert in the middle of butt fuck nowhere with little more than satellite surveillance as a guide.  In populated cities like Tokyo, new York, London it's a different story.  Even without a smart phone it doesn't take long to work out majority of your travels for any one day.

[Noctus]

43 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

No, I understand the quote quite well. 

Your replay says otherwise.

[mynameisjuan]

39 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

Not that I agree with the apple fanboy but that statement is just incorrect, if it were correct it wouldn't have taken so long to find bin laden

Ok well in america or larger countries where technology is all around you, not in bumfuck nowhere. 

[NumLock21]

Google's method of tracking you, even when you turn off your location settings.

[Commodus]

I don't see this as warranting the "shock!  Outrage!" response that some would argue for, but nor do I think it's a complete non-issue.

 

Really, the issue is that Google just doesn't think about the deeper implications of some of the things it does.  It's that Silicon Valley mindset (i.e. not just Google) where you design for convenience above all else and think about the consequences later.  It has to learn that privacy is something you think about at every single step of the way, not just after the fact.

[thorhammerz]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

The difference between Google and Apple when it comes to data collection is that Google makes its money from its data collection. Apple makes its money from selling you Services and Products and doesn't really need your information, just your money. 

 

Google doesn't sell services, it gives them away for free and they don't make enough from their extremely limited hardware line to keep them going. 

As the saying goes: if you're not paying for the product, YOU are the product - if the business was truly "free" it wouldn't be a business for very much longer  .

 

Tacit acceptance is the norm when one uses these services.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

From what I gather this is part of the Google Apps package, not of Android itself.  If this were a feature in AOSP, we'd have known about this within a month of it starting, not after almost a year. 

So if you run a custom ROM without the Gapps package, your location data doesn't get transmitted to Google.  The only one knowing where you are is your provider.   

 

That being said, this is just sad.  If you toggle the location tracking switch to the "off" position, there should be no location data collection at all. 

This "the switches, they do nothing" nonsense really has to stop.   

[Egg-Roll]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Apple makes its money from selling you Services and Products and doesn't really need your information, just your money. 

And you think they dont use that information to target specific products to you?

 

2 hours ago, Eduard the weeb said:

I kinda assumed this because I am a google local guide and I turned off location for a week and they still some how knew were I had gone.

 

I'm part of the same program (but i dont do the actual reviewing), to my understanding google will log your location "for your informations safety", they can only log it based on wifi or nfc (if you use pay). Google knew where my home and work was before i logged or enabled logging, so I'm guessing IP locationing.

 

As for the topic at hand, the common public shouldn't fear google. Having not just your cell provider tracking you is a good thing, it gives a far better alibi or evidence if anything negative happens to you. Those who should fear google are the ones who dont want their locations known by anyone, cheater on their spouse criminals etc. If you're paranoid, lock the door close the curtains everyone is out to get you!

 

Google might have made 10 bucks off of me personally, I've been using them when they were about 2 years old. For the service they provide tell me one place that offers it for 50 cents canadian a year? Sure they can populate my page with local ads or ads about my last months searching history but I dont click them, ever, unless I'm really really interested (so far 5 times tops)

 

And no I didn't read the 5 pages.

[Drak3]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

You don't get to call consumers stupid when they are the only reason a company like Google can exist. 

That's the precise reason I can call them stupid.

[LAwLz]

Sad to see so many people defend or deflect this despicable behavior.

If a user turns something off then it should be off. How this is even up for debate is mind blowing to me.

Good that Google is fixing it, but it really shouldn't have happened to begin with.

 

 

12 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Google is selling your data to those companies though........

I am fairly sure Google doesn't sell your data. They absolutely use your data to sell services to others, but as far as I know that's it. So I can't request to buy information about DrMacintosh, but I could ask Google to look up and serve a Mac ad to people who are likely interested in buying Apple products for example.

[Sniperfox47]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Sad to see so many people defend or deflect this despicable behavior.

If a user turns something off then it should be off. How this is even up for debate is mind blowing to me.

Good that Google is fixing it, but it really shouldn't have happened to begin with.

Umm because you're not turning *this* off... You can turn off location history, you can turn off precise location data, you can turn off a lot of things, but there's no "Do not track my location at all ever or anything I may do" setting.

 

Hell pretty much every website you go on logs some kind of coarse location data.

 

The fact that they may continue to track coarse location data if you opt out of location services is right in their privacy policy, not hidden in any way.

 

Should they have put out a notice about this service testing and given people the ability to opt-out? Yeah absolutely. Does it suck that they didn't at least have the courtesy to tell users "Hey, we're doing cell tower testing on cellular devices with Google Play services to help determine a reasonable time for service timeouts. We'll be collecting the IDs of cell towers near your device during this period"? Yeah.

 

But let's be perfectly honest here, they didn't lie to anyone. They've plainly stated in their privacy policy that they do this from time to time. They only pulled course location data, even though their privacy policy states in some cases they may pull GPS information too. And the program was relatively short term for such a widespread infrastructure study.

 

It sucks, but it's not exactly super malicious.

[yian88]

16 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

 

Its sad that this is expected of Google and yet people are ok with using their services as if they weren't blatantly lying to you. 

We are not Ok with it we just dont have any alternative other than open source software.

Where can i get a completely open source, telemetry free, encrypted smartphone that has most apps that i need? same thing with windows i want more than anything to use Linux but i cant it doesnt have software whats there left to do? windows 7 wont work on my 4K TV proper scaling, and its only so long untill its going to be completely expired, by 2020 win7 will be dead and win10 is the only option.

You tell me what can we do about it because i cant find a single damn solution to the spyware OS'es problem.

[LAwLz]

40 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Umm because you're not turning *this* off... You can turn off location history, you can turn off precise location data, you can turn off a lot of things, but there's no "Do not track my location at all ever or anything I may do" setting.

Both my LG and Samsung phone has a switch called "positioning". When I flip that it turns off both WiFi and GPS positioning. It is reasonable to expect that it will not track my location using cellphone towers either.

Whatever happened to living up to reasonable and sane expectations? Does everything need to be spelled out in extreme detail or else we should expect the worst? The box my phone came in did not explicitly say the box wasn't rigged with C4 either, but I think it is a fair and reasonable expectation of me to assume that the box won't explode when I open it.

 

40 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Hell pretty much every website you go on logs some kind of coarse location data.

Doesn't make it more acceptable.

"Everyone else is doing it" is a garbage excuse and I would appreciate if you don't ever try and justify bad behavior with it again.

 

40 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

The fact that they may continue to track coarse location data if you opt out of location services is right in their privacy policy, not hidden in any way.

1) Barely anyone actually reads those, and you know it.

2) Just because they have it in one of their policies does not mean they should be doing it.

I am not trying to argue if they are legally allowed to do something. I am arguing what I believe they should be doing from a moral standpoint. 

 

 

If Coca Cola were to suddenly start adding non-lethal doses of cyanide in their drinks would you defend them as well? It would be right there in the ingredients list. They would never have lied about not putting it in there. They could even have written it in one of their legal documents that can be found on their website. That does not mean we should all sit down and lick their boots.

 

Stop defending bad behavior.

[Sniperfox47]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Both my LG and Samsung phone has a switch called "positioning". When I flip that it turns off both WiFi and GPS positioning. It is reasonable to expect that it will not track my location using cellphone towers either.

Your shutting off the positioning hardware and the ability for apps to grab data from the positioning APIs linked to it from the Android OS. There is literally nothing there to indicate that it's some stealth mode that makes you impossible to track...

 

There is nothing stopping an app from grabbing user position from IP, from WiFi AP names, or from Cellular pings... and stock Android doesn't try to give any impression that it does. If your OEM has a skin that says "Turning this setting off is a stealth mask that makes apps unable to track your location" then get pissy with your OEM.

 

And keep in mind, this is not the Android OS capturing location info, it's Google Play Services. You disabling positioning information in Android and expecting that every app is going to respect that setting is ludicrous... That's the equivalent of turning off tracking in Windows and expecting Bing in not to serve you local content based on your IP when you pull it up in Edge...

 

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Doesn't make it more acceptable.

"Everyone else is doing it" is a garbage excuse and I would appreciate if you don't ever try and justify bad behavior with it again.

I'm not saying it's a good thing. I explicitly said it's a kinda shitty thing.

 

However, if you disagree with something but only jump on it when a high profile case comes up what change are you ever going to affect to the greater whole? Even if you manage to push people away from that company, or convince that company to change their ways, they are one in an infinite multitude. You've made no *real* change.

 

It's no different than all the people I see jump on the Microsoft thing, and still use a smartphone and still use Apple devices, and still pull up Facebook in their down time. People, not necessarily you but a lot of people in this thread, are doing a lot of bitching about a system that they contribute to every day.

 

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Both my LG and Samsung phone has a switch called "positioning". When I flip that it turns off both WiFi and GPS positioning. It is reasonable to expect that it will not track my location using cellphone towers either.

Whatever happened to living up to reasonable and sane expectations? Does everything need to be spelled out in extreme detail or else we should expect the worst? The box my phone came in did not explicitly say the box wasn't rigged with C4 either, but I think it is a fair and reasonable expectation of me to assume that the box won't explode when I open it.

 

Doesn't make it more acceptable.

"Everyone else is doing it" is a garbage excuse and I would appreciate if you don't ever try and justify bad behavior with it again.

 

1) Barely anyone actually reads those, and you know it.

2) Just because they have it in one of their policies does not mean they should be doing it.

I am not trying to argue if they are legally allowed to do something. I am arguing what I believe they should be doing from a moral standpoint. 

1) Barely anyone reads ingredients lists too. Or EULAs. Or instructions for medical  products .. Stop using that people have bad practices to argue that companies shouldn't >.>

 

2) I'm not saying they should be doing it, just that getting butthurt over it and going "they're such a shitty company" doesn't do anything to change the wider systematic issue, and that tunnel visioning on these high profile cases is really really really pointless.

 

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

If Coca Cola were to suddenly start adding non-lethal doses of cyanide in their drinks would you defend them as well? It would be right there in the ingredients list. They would never have lied about not putting it in there. They could even have written it in one of their legal documents that can be found on their website. That does not mean we should all sit down and lick their boots.

 

Stop defending bad behavior.

 

Absofuckinglutely I would say they're not in the wrong.

 

If a meth seller sells you meth, and you buy the meth and use the meth every day, you don't really have any right to bitch about how they got you addicted to meth.

 

If Coca-Cola put cyanide in their beverages and hid it, going out of their way to not put it on the list of ingredients that would be one thing. But if they put it right on the label with a warning "We put cyanide in here and it could kill you." and you choose to drink it anyways, you're the dumbass at fault.

 

Unless you're viewing this webpage on an Ancient processor or something OpenRISC, are using some security conscious kernel/OS, and routing your traffic through some service that obfuscates all your location sensitive data, you're a part of the problem.

 

Depending on what lengths you go to you may be more or less a part of the problem, but my point is that pretty much everyone is a part of this problem, and we don't find a solution by slamming on companies for doing this shit. We solve these problems by coming together, and collectively agreeing this isn't okay, and finding a way to work around it.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Your shutting off the positioning hardware and the ability for apps to grab data from the positioning APIs linked to it from the Android OS. There is literally nothing there to indicate that it's some stealth mode that makes you impossible to track...

Again you're making these ridiculous "unless it specifies exactly in these words then you shouldn't make reasonable assumptions about what something does".

Again, there is nothing on the box my phone came in that indicates that it wasn't rigged with C4 that would detonate when I opened it, but it was a rational expectation that I could open the box safely. When I turn off positioning then I expect them to be off. That really shouldn't be some crazy and illogical idea to you.

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

There is nothing stopping an app from grabbing user position from IP, from WiFi AP names, or from Cellular pings... and stock Android doesn't try to give any impression that it does. If your OEM has a skin that says "Turning this setting off is a stealth mask that makes apps unable to track your location" then get pissy with your OEM.

There is a very big difference between a third party app using shady methods of obtaining my location, and Google themselves doing it.

Also, there you go again with the quite frankly stupid "it doesn't say it doesn't track you so therefore it is OK for them to do it" defense. The button says it turns off positioning, so I expect it to do so. Third party apps misbehaving? That's bad, but first party services doing it is even worse.

Pretty sure stock Android has the toggle for positioning services too.

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

And keep in mind, this is not the Android OS capturing location info, it's Google Play Services. You disabling positioning information in Android and expecting that every app is going to respect that setting is ludicrous... That's the equivalent of turning off tracking in Windows and expecting Bing in not to serve you local content based on your IP when you pull it up in Edge...

I don't expect "every app" to follow the settings. I expect first party software to respect it. And yes, I was furious at Microsoft when it was revealed that some of the settings in Windows 10 don't actually shut things off either, but this thread is about Android not Windows. User settings should be respected, period. You might not be able to police every single third party developer but the first party ones should definitely do it.

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

However, if you disagree with something but only jump on it when a high profile case comes up what change are you ever going to affect to the greater whole? Even if you manage to push people away from that company, or convince that company to change their ways, they are one in an infinite multitude. You've made no *real* change.

What are you talking about? This thread is about Android so of course I will talk about what is going on at Android. I care about what other companies does with their products too (just ask @mr moose what I think of Windows 10) but this thread is about Android. We can not keep making the excuse that "company X is doing it too!" because that leads nowhere. Other companies doing equally bad things does not mean we should ignore or deflect the issues brought up against (in this case) Android.

Wanna know how you keep the status quo? By constantly drawing attention away from high profile cases like these.

Every single "Microsoft are fucking their users over" thread we get a bunch of people saying "baww stop hating on Microsoft. Go hate on Google instead".

Now in this Google thread we see people going "baww stop hating on Google. Go hate on Microsoft instead".

Don't you see how this will lead nowhere if we constantly do what the apologists are suggesting?

 

By the way, the uproar has made a change. Google will be changing it in an update. This will hopefully also send a clear message to other companies who will try and do the same thing. Some will get away with it because they aren't as high profile, but at least one big player has changed their ways for the better (very slightly in the grand scheme).

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

It's no different than all the people I see jump on the Microsoft thing, and still use a smartphone and still use Apple devices, and still pull up Facebook in their down time. People, not necessarily you but a lot of people in this thread, are doing a lot of bitching about a system that they contribute to every day.

I really don't get your logic here. It's because people use the systems every day that they complain and why this is so important. The more people use something the more important it is for them that it is actually good. The more you use something the more invested you should be.

It's because I use Android that I am invested in what Google does with the platform.

What do you think I care most about:

1) Coca Cola secretly putting cyanide into their drinks

or

2) Flathead Lake Monster, an obscure soda company in Montana, secretly putting cyanide into their drinks

Which one do you think I would care the most about?

[Doobeedoo]

Google our guardian angel. 

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

1) Barely anyone reads ingredients lists too. Or EULAs. Or instructions for medical  products .. Stop using that people have bad practices to argue that companies shouldn't >.>

Yes I know that people don't read the ingredients list. That's why I made that example.

It is not "bad practices" to not read privacy policies and EULAs because doing so would require an extraordinary amount of time as well as knowledge most people simply don't have. The entire system is broken beyond belief. How horrible TOS are is a subject for another day.

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

2) I'm not saying they should be doing it, just that getting butthurt over it and going "they're such a shitty company" doesn't do anything to change the wider systematic issue, and that tunnel visioning on these high profile cases is really really really pointless.

OK, what do you suggest? Clearly this outrage has made Google, which currently holds about 82% of the global smartphone market share to change their ways slightly. If you don't think changing the behavior of someone that holds 82% market share is a big deal then I would like to see what you suggest we pursue.

I think it would be worth grilling Google for this even if Android had 0.5% market share. Improving the product 0.5% of smartphone users use would be a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

You can't expect to change an entire industry without ever confronting anyone who actively contributes to the issue.

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

If a meth seller sells you meth, and you buy the meth and use the meth every day, you don't really have any right to bitch about how they got you addicted to meth.

Terrible analogy, because people were not aware of it happening. It's more like someone sells you pain killers for your migraine, and you take them every day. Then one day you realize that the pain killers you have been eating contain meth and now you're addicted to meth. And before you go "people should have known", they clearly didn't and you can't expect people to know. Do you know every single ingredient in every single food you have eaten in the last year? No? Me neither. But I don't have to, because we have laws which makes sure the ingredients are not severely harmful to us. We have laws which means we don't have to spend several hours every week reading the ingredients list to make sure what we eat doesn't contain poison that would kill us. In the same way we need laws which makes sure we don't have to read TOS and privacy policies which could harm us.

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

If Coca-Cola put cyanide in their beverages and hid it, going out of their way to not put it on the list of ingredients that would be one thing. But if they put it right on the label with a warning "We put cyanide in here and it could kill you." and you choose to drink it anyways, you're the dumbass at fault.

Not a label with a warning on it. I clearly wrote that they would put it in the ingredients list and on one page on their website (not a warning on the front page either, just somewhere on their website). Would you say someone who died from that would be a dumbass for not reading the ingredients list and realizing that CHEBI:17514 means cyanide? Yeah, what a dumbass. Totally deserves to die and Coca Cola did nothing wrong there.

 

Also, are you even listening to yourself? I don't even know how to respond to this. Do you understand why laws and regulations exist to begin with, or is that entire concept completely lost on you? By your logic, meth, heroin and everything else should be completely legal to buy and consume, because "if you use that then you're the dumbass at fault". Laws and regulations exists to protect people not just from themselves but also for being taken advantage of.

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Unless you're viewing this webpage on an Ancient processor or something OpenRISC, are using some security conscious kernel/OS, and routing your traffic through some service that obfuscates all your location sensitive data, you're a part of the problem.

Being a victim and being part of the problem are two different things.

Nice victim blaming though.

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Depending on what lengths you go to you may be more or less a part of the problem, but my point is that pretty much everyone is a part of this problem, and we don't find a solution by slamming on companies for doing this shit. We solve these problems by coming together, and collectively agreeing this isn't okay, and finding a way to work around it.

Are you serious? People are coming together. People are upset at Google for doing this and it has made Google change their mind. The one who isn't coming together is you, because you for some reason jump in and defend bad behavior while at the same time complaining that everyone else is part of the problem. You're the one who doesn't agree that this isn't OK. You're the one defending them and putting the blame on the users instead of the perpetrator.

People shouldn't have to work around issues when the companies can be held responsible and fix the core issues, just like Google is doing here by removing this in a future patch.

[jagdtigger]

@LAwLz

Just leave him alone, its clear he lost all contact with reality... Just like in case of win10. Total denial and ignorance.