undefined | Better HN

0 pointsl9k7y ago0 comments

Exactly. What's your point?

I read the ones from yesterday, including the AP that started the "scandal". The problem is that since Cambridge Analytica, any piece of privacy issue gets a clickbaity headline for little reason just to get viral, play with fear and emotions, and drive traffic. All of that for ads money from Google. Full circle.

On this story: Headline is "Google tracks users who turn off location history ", sub-headline is "Pretty sneaky", but actually in the article : "We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time".

0 comments

4 comments · 1 top-level

pacala7y ago· 3 in thread

Read the article. What are the "clear descriptions and robust controls" to turn off the following Google location tracking behaviors:

> Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you open the Maps app

> Automatic weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where a user is

> Searches that have nothing to do with location pinpoint precise longitude and latitude of users

jonknee7y ago

These are all features that people expect to work regardless of what they do with their settings... Why would you want a weather update for somewhere you aren't? If you search drug store should it tell you about the concept of drug stores or the actual drug stores that are down the street? There would be tons of people upset that Google is broken if it didn't take location into account for search.

pacala7y ago

For weather, I use 2 mechanisms: a. I setup IPhone weather app to my home town location. Works 95% of the time, I'm not traveling that much. b. Search for "<town> weather" when I'm traveling. Browser autocomplete makes this trivial. Fairly easy and doesn't feed Google with a stream of personalized location information.

===

A day in the life of a BigAdCo surveillance apologist:

1. Claim it's obviously easy to disable the tracking behavior.

2. Claim the tracking behavior is absolutely necessary for feature X.

3. Claim that someone else would do the track tracking / is doing the tracking, so BigAdCo must do it to compete. [Notice how this conflicts with 4].

4. Claim that users could just use the competition. [Notice how this conflicts with 3].

5. ???

6. Profit!

1 more reply

tkxxx77y ago

taking current location into account !== building a cumulative location profile over time without explicit consent

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse