Google and your location data

I thought Google was caught out mapping WAP as it drove around doing street view. Hence we were assured we can’t be tracked by the proximity of known WAPs? Google or anyone else. Dream on!

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Telstra has been offering free WiFi roaming if you happen to be within range of one of its home Internet customers. Of course, this service is purely to help Telstra customers - we can trust the company to not use the massive amounts of data it is able to collect using this ‘feature’.

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From my reading of the suit it alleges it was the GPS and other location data that was used, even if a user had thought they had turned this off it continued to store, and provide Location Data to other Apps and to Google as there were many Apps that had to be explicitly told (had to have it turned off) not to use Location Data. It is alleged this is even to the point that Ads were served based on that “turned off” Location Data. Some of this I have previously posted above but we will have to await the outcome of the case to probably/possibly get more detail as there is still a lot of redacted content.

I think this adds more weight to many of the arguments about why we need to more stringently regulate these large corporations as has been raised in the topic Do we Need to Regulate Google and Facebook

If only we could join in the suit in Az, maybe we could get some outcome to our benefit out of it ie our data truly expunged, an injunction on further collection…those would be good outcomes.

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I wonder if the same action is going to be taken against Apple and some phone manufacturers like Samsung.

Most of the new ‘find my phone’ functions if activated use, wifi and location information (from the phone and other nearby phones) to try and determine the location of the missing phone/device. Such is done without the consent of the phone users (especially other nearby phones).

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I like the thinking.

At what cost, given the differences?
Not just in the system of administration of justice but constitutionally and politically. The USA would need to accept conformance to the Australian way. Time to sell those Remington Outdoor Co Inc shares! While King Harry and Queen Megan might have a new future? :wink:

For legal precedent does Australia have a choice in this instance? We tend to follow the UK and trends from the EU more than how the USA chooses. No judgement on which is more relevant, better for the individual or the state.

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Not “caught out”. They did this and everyone knows they did this and there is nothing illegal in the fact that they did this. This information (SSID and MAC address) is after all broadcast intentionally in plaintext to all and sundry.

What they got “caught out” on was that in addition to recording the Wireless Access Point identity (SSID and MAC address) correlated to its GPS coordinates, they also recorded any traffic transmitted on that wireless network channel in the 0.2 second that the Street View car was paying attention provided that the wireless network does not have any encryption enabled. That could in theory include login passwords or email content etc.

At least I believe that this is what you are thinking of.

To be honest, I am not too stressed by the above. If you are silly enough to have a wireless network and not enable any encyption and not layer any secure protocols on top of that - then anyone can record your traffic, be it a wardriver or a neighbour or a government or Google.

It was more of an issue 10 years ago when this was a hot topic. Today, is there anyone left in Australia unintentionally running an unsecured wireless network?

Today, any half decent WAP arrives with a random password already set - so if you want to run it unsecured then you have to take an active step to achieve that.

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We are talking about two separate “suits” though. :slight_smile:

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Some CHOICE commentary on Google location tracking:

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We’ll cover the general principals, but your device may differ.

“principles”

From @grahroll
EDIT: The CHOICE article spelling mistake has now been fixed. Thank you for your heads up on the issue.

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And I just found out that I cannot use the CHOICE “Let us know” link at the bottom without handing over my life story!

@BrendanMays is all of that detail necessary?

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I’ll raise it with our privacy committee :+1:

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Maybe some of the items could be voluntary…rather than mandatory in the form. Email possibly mandatory to authenticate the person filling the form?

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Only if you have a major spam problem. There are other ways to address multiple submissions/attempts to flood you with notices, and it is very easy to get a disposable email account.

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First name and last name can be bogus. So they might as well be voluntary.

Email address is clearly required if you “would like a reply”. While a spammer can get a disposable email account, so can a legitimate user. It isn’t the problem that it once was.

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An article regarding a research project into how Google operates.

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It’s not all one way. It’s important to recognize when organization’s do the right thing. Google will now automatically opt-in to forget location history if visiting sensitive medical locations such as abortion clinics in the USA where it is now illegal in many states.

I know we’re in Australia but hopefully that is indicative of Google culture.

I think it’s indicative of Google knowing what the market wants.

There have been plenty of stories about the possibility for US states to seek data showing whether women have searched for the word “abortion”, or have been in the vicinity of a clinic that provides such services, or have used an app that monitors their cycle and learned from that app that they may be pregnant and so taken action to disrupt the potential pregnancy. US women are being warned not to use period-tracking apps!

So Google has announced that it will ‘forget’ 0.01% of all the data it collects on US women. It is doing nothing about web searches or its tracking cookies other than saying “we fight to protect your data” - which is misleading at best. And it gets positive media coverage for that tiny capitulation to public demand.

Of course, US states may pass laws preventing Google from deleting location data - in which case the company will happily keep hold of it until a lawful request is made to hand it all over.

Or … even worse … Google simply spotting an opportunity for some positive PR.

They may. But they may not have the legal authority to do so. (I am not sufficiently familiar with the US legal regime to offer an opinion one way or the other. Just pointing out that not every law that some rabid lawmaker can pass is actually valid.)

Quite apart from whether the law is valid is whether it is in practice enforceable. Legislatures everywhere are finding it difficult to tame surveillance capitalism. For example, to prove that Google deleted something, you would have to prove that Google had it in the first place.

What if Google geofenced all abortion clinics so that if you go near (e.g. within 500 metres of) a clinic, it stops collecting real location information and marks you as being somewhere plausible on the boundary of the geofence? So then a state of the US would also be trying to pass a law to force Google to collect more information (yeah, that’s just what we need).

Worse still, with many dodgy states, the abortion clinic would by definition be in another state of the US. So one state of the US would be trying to force a company domiciled elsewhere to collect data elsewhere and then not delete data held elsewhere.

I think the usual authoritarian regime principle applies. You won’t get your way 100% of the time. The highly motivated will always find a way. You just need to bludgeon into submission enough of the people enough of the time.

States of the US may also target mobile network operators for location information. They are easier game than Google because the towers by definition are unambiguously and unavoidably in the state that is attempting to subvert your privacy. Again though, it may be that the abortion clinic is out-of-state.

But the best solution here is … leave your phone at home. Or if you must take a phone, don’t use Android and don’t use Google Maps (and don’t use Google Search and …). Also consider taking the phone but switching it off before leaving home … so you only switch it on if you have a dire situation where you suddenly really need the phone.

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The Californian Government case about Google deceptive tracking practices of users has reached a settlement that includes a fine of US$93 Million for Google and some changes to their privacy policy.

While not a change to their tracking the privacy term changes are meant to make it clearer what information Google do collect.

Associated Press helped to start this legal case back in 2018 when they hired a privacy consultant to look into Google’s tracking practices.

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For Google, $93 million is a slap on the wrist. There is a much bigger case afoot against Google …