Google’s controversial location tracking is finally ending
With the smartphones that rule our lives, there is a constant balancing act – privacy versus convenience. On the one hand, we can’t get enough of lifestyle hacks that make everything so much easier than in the past; on the other hand, we don’t want to be tracked or have our data stolen and analyzed.
Unfortunately, one feeds the other, and so the balancing act continues.
Nowhere is this more true than for location tracking and data collection. Our smartphones can map our every move, track times and places, and then use AI to draw conclusions – this is where you have to work, shop, play, this could be a friend, this is probably where you’ll sleep tonight. charge your phone slowly…
But it’s a privacy nightmare—that data is the world’s largest virtual spy agency, and combined with GPS tracks from cars, wearables, and the online crumbs and search histories we keep leaving behind, apps that harvest data from our phones and if not, it’s no surprise that we are where we are.
Fortunately, in the last few years there have been attempts to clean it up – to an extent. Largely led by Apple, with Google trailing behind, we now have very specific location permissions and mandatory opt-outs, and a strong focus on the accuracy of data captured and when and how it can be captured.
Google is now entering the next phase of its own cleanup, deleting tracking data that is captured locally – on your phone, but stored centrally – in its cloud. It has a fancy marketing name – Timeline, but it’s really just a repository of your private data that Google stores and presents back to you in a fancy Google Maps user interface.
“Location history can give you more personalized experiences on Google, like place recommendations, based on where you’ve been,” the company tells users. “When you turn on Location History, your exact device location is periodically saved to your devices and to Google servers, even when you’re not using Google apps.”
But here comes the catch. “To make Google services useful for everyone, your data can also be used to: Display information such as popular times and environmental statistics based on anonymized location data,” and, crucial to the business model, “improving and development of Google services. including advertising products.”
Yes, there are the usual opt-out options and privacy settings, but inertia across the vast majority of the user base always ensures that the majority will stick to the defaults.
Google has tripped over its own feet over this in the past, seemingly tracking users when they disable location tracking on their phones. And as always, if the data is there, it can be used and is a risk. Report this “tow for the police” The New York Times he warned that “investigators use it to find suspects and witnesses near crimes, risking catching the innocent”.
The issue gained even more attention in the wake of the change in US abortion laws, when “Google urged to stop tracking location data Roe reversal’ to avoid ‘weaponizing phone data against women’.
While Google didn’t link the change to broader law enforcement sweepstakes or anything specific about the post-Roe consequences, Google confirmed late last year that it would finally stop tracking users’ location in its cloud and instead keep all such data exclusively on the device, iPhone-style. This change applies from December 1.
Google went a step further, using the example of a surprise birthday party to show how a user could geofence certain locations and not capture data from there at all “Let’s say you’re planning a surprise birthday party and you get directions to a nearby bakery to pick up a cake. Soon you’ll be able to see all of your recent activity on Maps related to the bakery in one central location, and easily remove your searches, routes, visits and shares with just a few taps.”
Bakery, clinic, you name it. Google has already started automatically deleting sensitive locations from data storage, but this latest step is much better.
There are a few other things to note. First, data is still captured until you turn it off, and captured data can be retrieved, even from the device. ESET’s Jake Moore warned of equivalent significant points on Apple devices: “When I was investigating digital forensics for the police, this little-known feature became extremely useful in finding evidence on iPhones.”
Another thing to note is that once this cloud data is deleted, it is gone permanently. And so users are told to save their timelines locally and make sure they have backups enabled so data will move from device to device when they switch.
Whether you should have your phone tracking your every move and taking a rolling record that any spy agency would be happy to produce is another debate entirely.
So, what should you do? Definitely applaud this device-only data move. Don’t store data for too long – the new default will be 3 months, which is long enough. Randomly watching your detailed tracks from seven years ago might seem like fun, but the data probably isn’t something you want to cache, not even on your phone.