[HN Gopher] Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain ed...
___________________________________________________________________
Google reportedly peeks into Android data to gain edge over third-
party apps
Author : pjmlp
Score : 260 points
Date : 2020-07-26 08:25 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| elisharobinson wrote:
| why AB test when your competition can do it for you ... SMH come
| on google
| thoraway1010 wrote:
| For everyone one of the apple / google huge privacy breach
| headlines / comments some quick thoughts.
|
| Google and Apple can at least plausibly infrastructure an
| anonymized data collection service and control access to it
| reasonably.
|
| - You probably should worry more about the per user per
| connection logs your "loggless" VPN provider keeps in crappy open
| to the world datastores.
|
| - The data sniffing and tracking your own ISP is doing.
|
| - The uninstallable malware / bloatware etc that comes on huge
| number of phones built by third parties (ie, not google or
| apple).
|
| Whenever I sign up for a "free" service (like google analytics or
| its equivalent for android) I am under almost no illusion that
| google isn't also using that data to help track users access the
| web target them, figure out what ads to show on my site (if I let
| them) etc etc.
|
| And yes, we will find out that facebook tracks the URLs of sites
| people share on their platform and "snoopes" on that to figure
| out popularity trends. And twitter will watch tweet metrics
| related to their competitors. I wonder if we will get some
| headlines over those issues.
|
| Finally, some folks come up with weird threat models - google is
| out to get me and now they can. Heads up, google could get you
| before this as well if they cared to. Can you imagine a govt
| having google's power. That would be a near dictatorship!
| aasasd wrote:
| Android 10 (on googlephones) has a feature called 'digital
| wellbeing' that can measure how much I gawk at the screen, and
| show that to me. Interesting, I think, let's see if that data
| stays locally. The only piece of info on data usage that I've
| found is a link to Google's overarching privacy policy. Oy vey.
| Some data-processing features in the settings are marked with
| 'data stays on the phone'--but this one isn't. So I have to
| _assume_ that 'wellbeing' snitches to Google, and can 't use it.
|
| "Collection of data is disclosed to and controllable by users"?
| Well, if the users presume that collection is going on unless
| said otherwise, then maybe.
|
| Annoying thing is, I'd quite want to use the voice assistant. Do
| I like to fiddle with integrations and workflows? Oh boy. Damn
| well I do. Do I know that my voiceprint won't turn up on Google's
| servers the minute I use the assistant? Nope.
|
| (Btw, another baffling trait of the Android ecosystem is how many
| well-known and widely-used hackish tools are closed-source: those
| from XDA and such. "Flash this binary to root your phone",
| "install this blob for low-level customizations". Eeeeh? I think
| I'll just disable all Google's misfeatures instead, for now.)
| cptskippy wrote:
| Their apps require weird/unnecessary permissions. Google Maps
| now requires access to monitor Physical Activity if you use
| Location Sharing.
| extropy wrote:
| That seems a reasonable thing to ask for location sharing.
| Probably really used for the timeline though.
|
| https://developer.android.com/about/versions/10/privacy/chan.
| ..
| [deleted]
| mgraczyk wrote:
| You can disable app-usage access for the digital wellbeing app
| in the system settings. Just search for "wellbeing", click into
| it, click the menu, then "turn off usage access".
|
| Google doesn't need this tool to track usage statistics for
| ads. The ads SDK used by app developers is orders of magnitude
| more useful as a data source.
| catalogia wrote:
| > _(Btw, another baffling trait of the Android ecosystem is how
| many well-known and widely-used hackish tools are closed-
| source: those from XDA and such. "Flash this binary to root
| your phone", "install this blob for low-level customizations".
| Eeeeh? I think I 'll just disable all Google's misfeatures
| instead, for now.) _
|
| It really seems like most of the android developer culture came
| from the oldschool windows freeware scene, which also has a
| baffling aversion to publishing source code.
| commoner wrote:
| That is true, but there has been some progress on the
| adoption of the FOSS model in the Android developer
| community. The most commonly used Android recovery software,
| TWRP, is open source.
|
| https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project
|
| The most popular Android rooting solution, Magisk, is also
| open source. All Magisk modules (plugins developed by the
| community) in the official repository are required to be open
| source.
|
| https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk
|
| https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Repo/submission
| izacus wrote:
| > Annoying thing is, I'd quite want to use the voice assistant.
| Do I like to fiddle with integrations and workflows? Oh boy.
| Damn well I do. Do I know that my voiceprint won't turn up on
| Google's servers the minute I use the assistant? Nope.
|
| Google Assistant uses servers to run voice recognition so it's
| certain that your voice print will end up on their servers.
| Same for Apple Siri and pretty much any of them. As far as I'm
| aware, only the Pixel 4's improved Assistant is capable of
| partial offline execution and even that ends up on Google's
| servers.
|
| Also additional question for HNers: Do you consider Apple's
| "Digital wellbeing" feature on iOS spyware as well? Is there a
| difference?
| aasasd wrote:
| I think explanations on the phone or in the online help say
| somewhere that the assistant sort of can recognize commands
| offline, even before Pixel 4. But I may be mistaken--can't
| find that now.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Yeah, pretty sure "offline Google Now" was a selling point
| back in the.. 4.4 days?
| izacus wrote:
| Yeah, but there's no guarantee that it'll do recognition on
| device (you can't force it). So it's not really useful from
| privacy perspective.
| nojito wrote:
| Siri requests aren't tied to unique persons.
| propogandist wrote:
| The digital wellbeing app is pretty much spyware. If you
| disable Google Play Service, the Wellbeing app (which cannot be
| disabled) will constantly complain that it won't work
| properly... The app has, among other permissions, the
| requirement to have full network access.
|
| Similarly, if you use the default Gboard (keyboard) on Android,
| it's constantly trying to call home to Google servers, as with
| most other stock apps.
|
| Android is just increasingly becoming spyware and best route is
| installing AOSP without GApps. Unfortunately, Google seems to
| be keen on limiting this behavior and increasing their lock-in
| with recent changes to Android, making it harder for the open
| source community to have control over the OS.
| euix wrote:
| That's funny, maybe Huawei phones are going to have a market
| niche in the west!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Yeah, Google's rootkit replaced by CCP's one.
| euix wrote:
| Doesn't the latest version of Mate 30 come on stock
| android since Google products cannot be factory installed
| due the export laws? In which case if you still don't
| feel safe you can wipe the device and install Lineage.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Wiping won't help if the hardware itself is compromised.
| Which is not totally implausible.
| mav3rick wrote:
| Google Play Services are the crux of the implementation of
| core services. If you're not okay with that don't buy the
| phone or install something else on it.
| sli wrote:
| It may feel good to say it, because you get to offload the
| responsibility onto consumers rather than the entity
| committing questionable (but legal) acts, but in reality
| "just don't do X" is never going to affect any sort of
| change. It's simply shifting blame onto people with no
| power to do anything.
|
| More to the point, you're essentially recommending that
| everyone pony up $1000+ for an iPhone. None of those lesser
| known options (or modern dumb phones) are known to the
| average smartphone user, average people don't know anything
| about these hardened Android forks, etc. Boycotts are
| really not very reliable, because most of it is exactly
| this: just telling people to do a boycott and then stopping
| there. I know it's not reasonable to expect everyone
| floating ideas to have a plan for implementation, but when
| it comes to these kind of boycott suggestions, _nobody_ has
| a plan. That 's why shifting the responsibility onto the
| consume isn't going to work. You're not going to mobilize
| near enough people.
|
| You know what does work, though? Strong privacy regulations
| with harsh penalties.
| [deleted]
| mav3rick wrote:
| You're not giving a company the right to ship their own
| implementation. GMS Core really is the implementation.
| You want the phone to work without that. How delusional.
| Can an Apple phone work without core services ?
| thatcat wrote:
| Some of them can. Look up postmarketOS
| robin_reala wrote:
| $399+, not $1000+.
| propogandist wrote:
| This is a weak argument to defend your employer.
|
| I'll use a version of AOSP without the data harvesting
| spyware baked in, although Google seems to be keen on
| shutting aspects of it down.
| mav3rick wrote:
| You have the option to do AOSP at least. What do you have
| with Apple ? Why don't you apply the same yardstick to
| them ? Can you flash your own bits on an iPhone ?
| commoner wrote:
| Instead of leaving Android entirely, one can use MicroG,
| which is a FOSS reimplementation of the Google Play
| Services client.
|
| https://microg.org
|
| https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore
|
| Currently, the easiest way to use MicroG is through
| CalyxOS, a distribution of Android 10 that preinstalls
| MicroG instead of Google Play Services. It supports all
| Pixel devices and the Xiaomi Mi A2.
|
| https://calyxos.org
|
| https://gitlab.com/calyxos
|
| Unlike most Android distributions, CalyxOS is designed to
| be used with a locked bootloader, which is more secure than
| an unlocked bootloader.
| propogandist wrote:
| Agreed. I was looking at MicroG again given Lineage OS
| has updated to Android 10, unfortunately it seems there
| are a changes for Android 10 that's preventing microG
| from being being fully compatible (SafetyNet API).
|
| Google's moves to lock down the platform further is also
| disgusting. They will be mandating a new App bundle
| format (AAB) instead of APK beginning in 2021. This will
| force more apps to run through Play Store, enabling more
| tracking & analytics. They will also require devs to give
| a copy of their signing key to Google for them to sign
| applications.
|
| https://www.xda-developers.com/google-play-
| billing-v3-app-bu...
| infogulch wrote:
| > They will also require devs to give a copy of their
| signing key to Google for them to sign applications.
|
| What.
| ignoramous wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oy_vey
| IgorPartola wrote:
| This is the kind of crap that convinced me to switch to Apple
| handsets back in the day when they were still a pain to use for
| various reasons (remember upgrading by connecting to iTunes with
| a cable?). Apple does some shady shady things but not with my
| privacy.
|
| Incidentally though they do have some settings you might want to
| check out though. One in particular let Facebook spy on your
| other apps so fine tune their ads.
| izacus wrote:
| This is a bizarre post considering that Apple collects very
| similar data via their analytics (there's an opt-out you need
| to select on your iOS device to opt out) and Apple Store itself
| (which counts downloads and knows about every update, install
| and uninstall of an app on your iOS device with no alternative
| option for you as a user).
|
| If you really care about your privacy in this case, Apple
| devices won't save you either. The difference is just in the
| fact that ArsTechnica decided not to write an article about it,
| but your data is being uploaded all the same :/
| coldcode wrote:
| No the difference with Apple is they don't make money off of
| your data, they make money selling you devices. Google needs
| to know about your data in order to sell it or ads or
| whatever to third parties.
| brnt wrote:
| A solution that doesn't merely change masters but gets rid of
| them entirely would be to get a phone with LineageOS. When I
| need a new one, the Lineage supported devices list is the only
| list I care about.
| zodiakzz wrote:
| >The data was used earlier this month in India, where Google
| planned to roll out a competitor app to TikTok.
|
| Ah! I was hoping the Google Cemetery meme would die out soon. Not
| so fast I guess.
| aasasd wrote:
| And here I thought that 'stories' on Youtube is a competitor to
| Tiktok.
|
| Apparently in this day only carpet-bombing with services bears
| fruit.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| What truly flabbergasts me is that businesses today still feel
| that Google's platforms and services can help their business.
|
| The reality is, if you are a business, _Google is your
| competitor_. Which means Google getting a hold of any information
| about your business should be part of your _threat model_.
|
| You may not be in Google's sights today, but you very well could
| be tomorrow. And they will use your usage of their platforms to
| screw you.
| jadbox wrote:
| In my direct experience being in SV startups for over 10yrs,
| this is also true for all major tech companies. They all abuse
| their platform power to enter into a new market segment. Just a
| few days ago this journal was published:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-tech-startup-echo-bezos-...
| tmpz22 wrote:
| What's funny to me is despite wielding all this power and
| network effects - when tech giants try to enter new markets
| they fail at a seemingly higher rate then start-ups and other
| businesses. They have a ten mile head start and are still
| losing the race consistently. Which is probably good for most
| consumers.
| Guest19023892 wrote:
| I think they just expect a higher return than smaller
| start-ups. I mean, if Google tries to make a new service
| and it's 'only' generating a few million in revenue, that's
| not very exciting and they'll either i. directly kill the
| service, or ii. gamble with aggressive methods of growth
| that likely kill the service.
|
| Meanwhile, give a start-up with 5 people a few million in
| revenue, and they'll be jumping with joy at their success.
| Plus they'll have a lot more passion, and more carefully
| manage risk while growing the business.
| sukilot wrote:
| It's fundamental to the platform business. The Internet just
| happens to be the biggest place to build platforms. But it's
| the same as how grocery stores or any intermediary works.
| dynjo wrote:
| Honestly is anyone surprised..
| rapnie wrote:
| And isn't this done across _all_ google services - those
| products that are comfortably run within millions of businesses
| - to gain valuable market insights / biz intelligence? Who
| knows.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| If you fill a trough, pigs will come.
|
| We have this saying in Germany about data collection. What it
| means is you can usually assume that given enough time,
| companies will do the worst with the data that exists, so the
| only reasonable approach is to never collect so much data in
| the first place.
| ssss11 wrote:
| I like that saying.
|
| And i agree companies should only be allowed to gather the
| minimal data necessary in a given situation.
| 0xy wrote:
| >"The API doesn't obtain any information about in-app activity
| and our collection of this data is disclosed to and controllable
| by users"
|
| Google is excellent at this kind of word maneuver, designed to
| confuse and mislead.
|
| Google gets confronted about an egregious practice, and a PR
| representative responds with "well, we would absolutely never do
| [slightly worse unrelated thing]". This happens over and over
| again.
|
| They get caught, MSM blindly repeats Google PR talking points
| with enormous spin and PR manuevering, and everyone forgets until
| the next scandal.
| 0xWTF wrote:
| I have to say, my experience working with Google is that they
| actually resist the acquisition of information that's not in
| the public domain in a lot of ways. I've seen them fund another
| company's development team to do work, even buying the other
| company hardware for the task, just to avoid the data. I've
| seen them consciously exclude engineering tools you'd think are
| right up their alley, because the tools would acquire data
| which, while entirely in-scope and on-mission, could be
| considered too sensitive in some context.
|
| If they're collecting this data, I strongly suspect they feel
| obligated to, maybe even compelled too. Possibly for purposes
| like app security, user security, OS security, user experience,
| etc.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| > If they're collecting this data, I strongly suspect they
| feel obligated to, maybe even compelled too. Possibly for
| purposes like app security, user security, OS security, user
| experience, etc.
|
| This doesn't really make sense; none of those are compelling
| use cases for such invasive data collection. And this
| _additional new_ tracking does not seem very useful for
| security, and even then there 's no reason for all of the
| data to leave the device if it's for security.
| tdeck wrote:
| Play collects certain metrics about app usage because app
| developers want them (not sure how much overlap there is
| with what's described in the article).
|
| Source:
|
| https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
| developer/answ...
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Apple and Microsoft collect the same data (with the same
| ability to opt out of app usage reporting). Apple is the worst
| of the three because there is _no_ supported way to install an
| app on iOS without telling Apple.
| throwaway189262 wrote:
| We desperately need a standardized open source phone. The
| raspberry pi of phones. Linux may be a better platform than AOSP.
| Android and iOS were designed for control first.
|
| Control over apps, control over the store, over what users are
| allowed to do. If you don't need any of that to make money why
| not run a regular Linux distro.
|
| Opens source phones will never be mainstream. Same as desktop
| Linux. But it would be nice to have a widely supported option for
| those of us that care
| burtonator wrote:
| HN loves to talk about how Open Source and distributed system
| are going to change the world.
|
| Apache and Linux were open source. The Internet was designed to
| be distributed. We failed.
|
| We still had centralization. We still have SPoF...
|
| The issue is economic, not technical.
|
| When corporations like Amazon and Google have _severely_ unfair
| competitive advantages we 're going up in this situation again
| and again and again.
|
| The only way to change this is to reform tax law.
| kazagistar wrote:
| And the only way to reform tax law is to reform speech law to
| prevent blatant corruption.
| guerrilla wrote:
| It seems like we're getting there with Prism [1] and Pine [2].
| Seems to be a couple more I've never heard of [3].
|
| [1]. https://puri.sm/products/
|
| [2]. https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
|
| [3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-
| source_mobile_pho...
| cesarb wrote:
| > > We desperately need a standardized open source phone. The
| raspberry pi of phones.
|
| > It seems like we're getting there with Prism [1] and Pine
| [2]. Seems to be a couple more I've never heard of [3].
|
| But are they standardized? That is, can I have a single
| "phone OS" distribution which can be installed unmodified in
| all of them? We're already there with the Raspberry Pi: the
| 64-bit Fedora I installed on mine boots through UEFI, and the
| same Fedora install should boot on any other UEFI-using
| 64-bit ARM board. That's the only way to get the necessary
| scale; otherwise, the community will stay split in separate
| silos (a purism silo, a pine64 silo, etc).
| okennedy wrote:
| The Librem 5's PureOS is very nearly stock Debian and the
| Purism devs have been very diligent about getting their
| stuff upstreamed into mainline Linux and Debian.
|
| Pine doesn't employ software developers, but the Manjaro
| and Mobian communities are also doing their best to stay as
| close to stock desktop distributions as possible.
|
| A key difference between the Pi and both the Librem 5 and
| Pinephone is that the latter two made an explicit design
| choice to use stock-standard (nearly) blob-free hardware.
| Unlike Raspbian, which relies on a custom kernel, PureOS,
| Mobian, Manjaro, etc... are very nearly standard desktop
| operating systems, with relatively minor tweaks to system
| defaults. Heck, PureOS and Manjaro _are_ desktop operating
| systems just running on the phone with mobile-oriented
| shell .
|
| There was a nice, related post on this from Purism a few
| days ago: https://puri.sm/posts/investing-in-real-
| convergence/
| input_sh wrote:
| Worth noting that Purism's ex-CTO seems rather pissed
| about the company: https://twitter.com/zlatandebian/statu
| s/1287317134423535622
| lightgreen wrote:
| > collects sensitive Android user data
|
| Looks like it's basic metrics like how often the app is launched.
| It is not sensitive (user content of the apps would be
| sensitive).
|
| It is an antitrust issue but barely a security/privacy issue.
| frf37 wrote:
| You are assuming that all apps are generic. Some apps actually
| are specific to a medical condition you can have or certain
| aspect of your life that are not known by the general public.
| It is of the same nature as your browsing history in some ways.
| So yes apps usage patterns are actually potential privacy
| issues. Admittedly since most apps are downloaded from the app
| stores Google would already know part of the story but still
| your usage pattern may reveal even more especially when
| correlated to other data.
| jstanley wrote:
| Call me old-fashioned, but if anybody knows when or how often
| I'm executing a particular program on my own hardware, that
| _is_ a privacy issue.
| tdeck wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the details, but it's very likely these
| data are k-anonymized and sampled to make it impossible to
| identify a particular person.
| lightgreen wrote:
| It is 1/1000 of the issue of looking into other app messages
| and 1/1000000 of the issue of looking into other app messages
| by humans and selling it to unknown parties.
|
| If we call every issue equally important privacy violation,
| one day we will overlook the one really important issue,
| which this issue isn't.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Knowing John/Jane Doe uses a particular dating app
| specializing in extranarital affairs frequently, and pretty
| much always when their spouse is out, that sort of thing
| may well be very sensitive.
| lightgreen wrote:
| Yes, but on average (or equally, in total) it is 1000
| times less sensitive than reading messages and 1000000
| times less sensitive than selling that data.
| sk0g wrote:
| Where are all these numbers coming from? Would you be ok
| with a publicly broadcasted CCTV in your bedroom, since
| one in your bathroom would be 1e4 times worse?
| lightgreen wrote:
| No, but broadcasting cctv pointing to the skies above my
| home would not be a huge issue. Continuing the analogy,
| in skies broadcasting the issue would be how they could
| connect to my camera, rather than privacy which is also
| violated and also a tiny issue.
|
| Or another analogy. If Google threatened to blow a
| nuclear bomb over Manhattan, Google gaining knowledge
| about competitors would not be an issue.
|
| Yeah, Google spying for other apps is bad. But let's not
| miss the forest for the trees.
|
| (Also, please don't use ad hominem arguments, the
| conversation becomes emotionally loaded rather than
| coldly rational.)
| nitrogen wrote:
| _No, but broadcasting cctv pointing to the skies above my
| home would not be a huge issue._
|
| "Within 38 hours of resuming transmission, the flag was
| located by a collaboration of 4chan users, who used
| airplane contrails, flight tracking, celestial
| navigation, and other techniques to determine that it was
| located in Greeneville, Tennessee.... after a field at
| the location was set on fire, the artists were again
| forced to relocate the project." -- https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/LaBeouf,_R%C3%B6nkk%C3%B6_%26_...
|
| And it gets better (at another location): "In the early
| hours of October 25, 2017, vandals unsuccessfully
| attempted to set fire to the flag using a flaming drone,
| before crashing the remotely-piloted aircraft."
|
| Never underestimate how much can be gleaned from leaked
| information, or the extent to which harm can be done with
| very little information.
| sk0g wrote:
| You're using random numbers and referring to them as some
| universally accepted truths, in order to justify smaller
| transgressions. How is that fuel for a rational
| conversation?
|
| Edit: also, your entire justification for this spying is
| that it could be worse. That reads to me like an ad
| hominem attack in itself.
| lightgreen wrote:
| > You're using random numbers
|
| I use some numbers which are my estimations, and not
| random numbers. I could explain how I made these
| estimations if you asked (Short version by definition of
| risk which is damage multiplied by probability). Also if
| you disagree with these estimations, you are welcome to
| suggest your better estimations, how these three
| scenarios compare to each other.
|
| > your entire justification for this spying is that it
| could be worse. That reads to me like an ad hominem
| attack in itself.
|
| It would be ad hominem attack if I said it could be worse
| for _you_. But I didn't, and not everything is about you,
| so my argument wasn't ad hominem.
|
| Also, probably best to admit this conversation is
| derailed and stop it for the good.
| jevgeni wrote:
| My second most favorite techbro meme is people pretending
| to be rational, when they are 100% emotional.
| [deleted]
| jevgeni wrote:
| Didn't HN collectively loose their s..t when Microsoft did
| something similar with Win 10 telemetry?
| fxtentacle wrote:
| The difference appears to be that by now, everyone is kind of
| used to this behavior from Google.
| jevgeni wrote:
| True. I also think the techbro meme of "M$ bad, Google
| good" still has a certain hold on people's minds.
| ta17711771 wrote:
| Project Zero, their general position in security-first1,
| and nice hardware have me sticking around, even though I
| can't stand their methods and mission (ad dollars by any
| means).
|
| 1Watch out for your privacy, though, if you don't remove
| Google "services" from your devices.
| fierarul wrote:
| On the contrary, the current tech bro pretty much loves
| Microsoft ever since the cool CEO took over and deeply
| distrusts Google.
| jevgeni wrote:
| I'd bet it has less to do with the cool CEO and more with
| the plethora of useful devtools and tech released by
| Microsoft lately.
|
| Also, being able to reach a person on the phone regarding
| my Azure billing was radically different to being in
| contact (or lack thereof) with Google.
| fierarul wrote:
| Microsoft did and continues doing that, correct? I don't
| remember any article on them stopping that or even explain
| what telemetry contains.
| jevgeni wrote:
| There is no suggestion that Google stopped said practice as
| well. But the indignation on HN (at least) is usually left
| for anything but Google.
|
| You can see what information (broadly) Microsoft collects
| through Windows 10 in the opt-in screen for telemetry. More
| detailed information has been published here:
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-
| wi...
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| They still do collect telemetry, but they've gone to great
| lengths to implement GDPR for everyone instead of just the
| EU. I do like that they provide a viewer to see exactly
| what is getting uploaded and offered easy ways to adjust
| how much data does get uploaded.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/diagnostic-data-
| viewer/9n8...
| [deleted]
| gigatexal wrote:
| The temptation to exploit data you collect is too high. Best not
| to collect this data in the first place.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I always assumed they'd be doing this. Given that Facebook went
| as far as buying a VPN company and then turning it into spyware
| to get a fraction of that data, it'd be surprising to me for
| Google not to be using what they have.
| gerash wrote:
| This is an unfair advantage but I don't think is specific to
| Google. I don't know whether Apple collects such consumer usage
| metrics or not but Amazon, Walmart, Costco, etc. they all monitor
| consumer metrics and might end up building a competing
| product/service based on those metrics.
| izacus wrote:
| Apple certanly collects metrics about AppStore downloads
| (they're after all available to developers with
| https://developer.apple.com/app-store-connect/analytics/ ).
| There's also a decent chunk of analytics going from iOS
| (probably order of magnitde less than Android though) you need
| to opt out of.
| alexandrerond wrote:
| The time spent bitching here about Google could be spent getting
| your/a phone free of it by putting Lineage OS or Graphene OS
| without Google Play on it. Just saying.
| klyrs wrote:
| You can say the same thing without insulting everybody. "Just
| saying" is a value-free non-apology; if you find yourself using
| it, you might want to reconsider your delivery instead.
|
| Practices like this are why I disabled google play store at
| first (why does the play store demand access to my camera, mic
| and body sensors???); and later got frustrated with the number
| of apps that were fundamentally broken without it. This
| prompted me to look for alternatives, which is why I use
| lineageos today.
| sli wrote:
| This is an ineffective solution that will likely never even be
| a blip on the scale, much less approach the critical mass it
| would need to have any real effect. You're really only fooling
| yourself if you think the average person is going to go through
| any of that trouble, especially with the prevalence of locked
| bootloaders.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not three days ago there was this article about another company
| where people were immediately saying with great authority that
| Google would never do this.
| swiley wrote:
| There is not a single good "mobile os."
|
| Trash all of them and just put GNU/Linux on your devices if you
| really have to have a smart phone.
| vdfs wrote:
| Android run on GNU/Linux, problem is not in the kernel but user
| land apps will track you
| nitrogen wrote:
| It doesn't run GNU, or at least not much of it.
| xondono wrote:
| To me the most worrying is that while I intellectually know this
| is bad, emotionally it gets a solid "meh" from me.
|
| Google is desensitizing us to this kind of bad behavior, to the
| point that this sounds like it's only half the story, or not such
| a bug deal.
| mrweasel wrote:
| "meh" sound about right, I didn't know that Google where doing
| things like this, but my response was pretty much; "meh, I
| doubt that anyone is really surprised".
| jarfil wrote:
| All I care about is whether this is opt-in and whether I can
| decide to not give then that data.
|
| Other than that, Google being able to process more data about
| their own platform than others, is something to be expected.
| xondono wrote:
| Agreed, but there's a lot to say about what's the default and
| how you are supposed to opt-out.
|
| If Google is artificially inflating opt-out costs for the
| user, then that's something to watch for.
| dannyr wrote:
| If Google is really doing this, you'd think they could make
| messaging and social media apps that are actually competitive.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Data won't get you very far here. You actually need good
| product/UX design.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Based on their current product line up I doubt that Google
| has a single UX designer employed.
| throwaway189262 wrote:
| I think they decided it was unnecessary.
|
| They slurp up contacts, emails, location data, search,
| pictures. Everything you would get from a social network they
| already have, just from disparate sources.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| Copying boring social apps seems like such a waste of the talent
| and creativity at Google. They should focus more on innovation
| instead of this kind of cut-throat bs.
| xenospn wrote:
| Google doesn't innovate anymore. They acquire and throw most of
| their acquisitions in the trash.
| flutterdude420 wrote:
| Alpha Zero and Quantum supremacy don't count as innovation?
| philipov wrote:
| With a hundred billion dollars, they can do both.
| markosaric wrote:
| Google loves to devour all the data it can so best to keep them
| as far away as possible from the devices and properties that you
| own and control.
| arkanciscan wrote:
| It's too bad there's not an open platform where apps can be
| deployed without a centralized proprietary app store...
| thatha7777 wrote:
| Unsurprising. Another decade-old example: in the pre-iPhone/pre-
| Android era, when Google Maps was available on BlackBerry, Google
| created a vast database that associated cellphone tower locations
| to addresses, on the (smart) assumption that the "from" location
| is usually where you are.
|
| They used this as a negotiating tactic for acquisitions they made
| in the space...
| kevmo314 wrote:
| Heh, it's like first generation machine learning.
| [deleted]
| sukilot wrote:
| How does knowing where you are affect acquisitions? And why
| wouldn't they know just from talking to the target?
| nitrogen wrote:
| I'm not sure, but I think the OP meant that Google pointed
| out "we already have this DB, so you're _really_ not worth
| _that_ much to us " in negotiations with location data
| vendors.
| izacus wrote:
| Yes, those databases are sadly very common and are fundamental
| to how location services work on the phone. In most cases
| there's no good GPS signal in urban areas, so cell tower and
| wifi locations are the most reliable way of determining the
| location. These databases are of course very valuable and
| require constant updates.
|
| Pretty much every manufacturer has them - Apple was
| collecting/uploads this data (cell towers, wifis and your
| location) in iOS 4 as well:
| https://www.computerworld.com/article/2507791/iphone-secretl...
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