Idle Android Devices Send Data to Google Nearly 10 Times More Often Than iOS Devices do to Apple, Research Finds

[ColeWorld]

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In a paper titled "Google Data Collection," Douglas C. Schmidt, a computer science professor at Vanderbilt University, arrives at some stark conclusions regarding how much Google is collecting about consumers who use the company's products, even when they aren't interacting with their smartphones and tablets. 

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Schmidt's experiments found that an idle Android phone with Chrome web browser active in the background communicated location information to Google 340 times during a 24-hour period. An equivalent experiment found that on an iOS device with Safari open but not Chrome, Google could not collect any appreciable data unless a user was interacting with the device. 

Quote

In addition, he found that an idle Android phone running Chrome sends back to Google nearly fifty times as many data requests per hour as an idle iPhone running Safari. Overall, an idle Android device was found to communicate with Google nearly 10 times more often than an Apple device communicates with Apple servers. 

Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/08/22/android-sends-data-google-10-times-ios-to-apple/

 

Personally I think it's fine for Google to collect as much information as they want, as long as it's clearly visible to the user exactly what is being collected and there is an option to turn off things the user doesn't want collected. However, this study along with others seem to repeatedly show that Google isn't giving the users full control over their privacy and continuing to collect data even on things the user turns off, which is bad.

[Shally]

I don't think anyone is surprised. Google knows more about you than you do. 

 

Personally I think it's fine for Google to collect as much information as they want, as long as it's clearly visible to the user exactly what is being collected and there is an option to turn off things the user doesn't want collected. 

The problem is that "option" isn't really an option, at all.

[Deus Voltage]

After everything is said and done, a 3310 and an average Canon camera might not be a bad idea after all 

[Okjoek]

 

[NelizMastr]

2 minutes ago, Deus Voltage said:

After everything is said and done, a 3310 and an average Canon camera might not be a bad idea after all 

If only the 3310 was still able to connect to a network everywhere around the world, lol.

[captain_to_fire]

How am I not surprised. Google's business model is on personal information and advertising whereas Apple's business model is selling devices (iPhones, iPads and Macs) and services (iCloud, iTunes, Apple Music).

• Apple's telemetry is anonymized and depersonalized on the device level before it leaves and can be turned off (iTunes and Apple Music telemetry use personalized telemetry though for content suggestions)
• You can see the actual contents of the telemetry data within your iPhone and iPad
• You can turn off access to photos, contacts, microphone, etc of third party apps within Settings.

With that said, I still prefer Google Maps over Apple Maps until now. It still doesn't have turn by turn navigations in my area.

[jagdtigger]

10 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

You can turn off access to photos, contacts, microphone, etc of third party apps within Settings.

Android can do that too, and if you have a AOSP based ROM without playstore google wont get any data from it.

[Sauron]

As if it being more or less frequent made any difference... 30 times per day is more than enough to know your whereabouts. If anything, at least a constant ping has a better chance of actually doing something useful for the user (I leave location off though).

[tridy]

Someone's got to write a firewall app that would block all the traffic to Google "telemetry" services while the phone is locked. I wonder if a service like PIA would help with that.

 

I have my hopes for Sailfish OS 3 though. 

[rcmaehl]

8 minutes ago, tridy said:

Someone's got to write a firewall app that would block all the traffic to Google "telemetry" services while the phone is locked. I wonder if a service like PIA would help with that.

 

I have my hopes for Sailfish OS 3 though. 

There's one built into the device, but you need to have root to access it. It's called iptables and the host file

[Linus_torvalds]

12 minutes ago, Sauron said:

(I leave location off though).

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

 

 

[Linus_torvalds]

2 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

There's one built into the device, but you need to have root to access it. It's called iptables and the host file

Hosts file is a joke. It does not work on windows 10 and it will not work in android too for securing device from company that made OS you are running

 

Sailfish OS is the way to go. I use it on my Nexus 5. It's fast, battery lasts much longer, is a full fledged linux distro (of course on arm cpu).

[rcmaehl]

Just now, mate_mate91 said:

Hosts file is a joke. It does not work on windows 10 and it will not work in android too for securing device from company that made OS you are running

 

Sailfish OS is the way to go. I use it on my Nexus 5. It's fast, battery lasts much longer, is a full fledged linux distro (of course on arm cpu).

I personally use LineageOS, it's got a large following, large device compatibility tree, and I haven't had any issues with it so far.

[Sauron]

6 minutes ago, mate_mate91 said:

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

That doesn't matter, the data they get from cell towers is much less accurate and someone (the ISP) already has that information. Furthermore I usually turn off my 4g connection when I don't need it.

[Drak3]

5 minutes ago, mate_mate91 said:

Hosts file is a joke. It does not work on windows 10 and it will not work in android too for securing device from company that made OS you are running

 

Sailfish OS is the way to go. I use it on my Nexus 5. It's fast, battery lasts much longer, is a full fledged linux distro (of course on arm cpu).

Chief, Google doesn't make Android, they maintain the "official" commercial version.

[Bananasplit_00]

4 hours ago, mate_mate91 said:

Hosts file is a joke. It does not work on windows 10 and it will not work in android too for securing device from company that made OS you are running

 

Sailfish OS is the way to go. I use it on my Nexus 5. It's fast, battery lasts much longer, is a full fledged linux distro (of course on arm cpu).

You can't run anything android though on that, right? I still sadly need some apps but Sailfish OS is something I have wanted to try for quite a while, but I haven't had anything compatable until I got my OP3 but that seems to have a dead DAC now and also as I suck at android and phone things I'd probably screw up and brick it again lol

[Linus_torvalds]

3 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

You can't run anything android though on that, right? I still sadly need some apps but Sailfish OS is something I have wanted to try for quite a while, but I haven't had anything compatable until I got my OP3 but that seems to have a dead DAC now and also as I suck at android and phone things I'd probably screw up and brick it again lol

You can. There was sfdroid earlier that ran android apps within android OS on top which sailfish works. Then russians leaked aliendalvik. I made easier installing aliendalvik and changed some things to allow it to run on nexus 5 with base CM12. Then development moved on and nexus 5 now uses CM13 as base, aliendalvik stopped working But if you have nexus 4 or 5 and are willing to use older Sailfish OS which uses older base CM11 or CM12 i can help you to install aliendalvik to run any android app you like Google now works too.

 

For now there is great hope on anbox. Android in a box. If it's development goes from alpha to beta and then stable then we will have software to run android apps on ANY linux version, including ubuntu touch, sailfish os and any other linux desktop distro.

[Bananasplit_00]

1 minute ago, mate_mate91 said:

You can. There was sfdroid earlier that ran android apps within android OS on top which sailfish works. Then russians leaked aliendalvik. I made easier installing aliendalvik and changed some things to allow it to run on nexus 5 with base CM12. Then development moved on and nexus 5 now uses CM13 as base, aliendalvik stopped working But if you have nexus 4 or 5 and are willing to use older Sailfish OS which uses older base CM11 or CM12 i can help you to install aliendalvik to run any android app you like Google now works too.

 

For now there is great hope on anbox. Android in a box. If it's development goes from alpha to beta and then stable then we will have software to run android apps on ANY linux version, including ubuntu touch, sailfish os and any other linux desktop distro.

I understood pretty much the last part and that I should buy a nexus 5 if I want to jump to Sailfish good luck though, but I have like €50 and I need that right now

[Linus_torvalds]

27 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

I understood pretty much the last part and that I should buy a nexus 5 if I want to jump to Sailfish good luck though, but I have like €50 and I need that right now

It's not necessary you can  buy phone which is officialy supported by Sailfish and you will have official aliendalvik to use any andorid app.

[samcool55]

Well thats no surprise... those stupid google play services checked my location almost 10.000 times in less than a week so im surprised its only 10 times more than apple...

[Guest]

Surely theres some ROM out there all privacy and security that turns these off right?

[kirashi]

15 hours ago, Deus Voltage said:

After everything is said and done, a 3310 and an average Canon camera might not be a bad idea after all 

I like how we've come to a point where we're comparing an "average" Canon camera as an alternative to the Sony cameras found in all Smartphones when, even in 2018, a $150-$200 point and shoot camera is going to outperform any smartphone on the planet because it has real optical glass in a lens that has real zoom, even if its' only 4x zoom.

 

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to have a camera in a Smartphone capable of being as versatile as a $200 point and shoot, but for that to happen, consumers have to recognize that you cannot fit the kind of optics required for this into a smartphone body unless you're willing to accept a phone that's 1-2cm thick.

[Deus Voltage]

1 hour ago, kirashi said:

I like how we've come to a point where we're comparing an "average" Canon camera as an alternative to the Sony cameras found in all Smartphones when, even in 2018, a $150-$200 point and shoot camera is going to outperform any smartphone on the planet because it has real optical glass in a lens that has real zoom, even if its' only 4x zoom.

 

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to have a camera in a Smartphone capable of being as versatile as a $200 point and shoot, but for that to happen, consumers have to recognize that you cannot fit the kind of optics required for this into a smartphone body unless you're willing to accept a phone that's 1-2cm thick.

So what camera do you recommend for the 200$ price bracket? Assuming it's for the average joe 

[asus killer]

17 hours ago, HJ_KOBE said:

Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/08/22/android-sends-data-google-10-times-ios-to-apple/

 

Personally I think it's fine for Google to collect as much information as they want, as long as it's clearly visible to the user exactly what is being collected and there is an option to turn off things the user doesn't want collected. However, this study along with others seem to repeatedly show that Google isn't giving the users full control over their privacy and continuing to collect data even on things the user turns off, which is bad.

i don't use chrome on android or any of my PC's. Problem solved.

 

I don't get how your text clearly mentions chrome as the problem and then you conclude in the title that it's a OS (android vs IOS) issue? Very misleading 

[kirashi]

36 minutes ago, Deus Voltage said:

So what camera do you recommend for the 200$ price bracket? Assuming it's for the average joe 

I'll be honest - it's been a while since I've looked at the current models of $200-$300 point and shoots, as my Canon SX280 HS is showing its age now. Generally speaking though, I check both TheWirecutter.com's current recommendation https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-cheap-camera/ and then do a lot of reading on DPreview.com to see what they're reviewing as decent cameras in the price range. You really want to look for the camera with the fastest auto focus and best low light performance in your budget, be that at the $200 or $300 mark.