So the e-mail I got with them claiming they will delete my location history is a lie?
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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Privacy
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To the best of my knowledge - from a spirited but doomed attempt to read Google's privacy policies - Google is committed to deleting your location history after sharing it with 10,000 or so vendor partners.
Each of those vendor partners have pinky promised to comply with the rules outlined in the same privacy policy that I failed to read.
For context, I'm not convinced any living person has read the entirety of Google's privacy policies.
Sadly, I'm quite confident - by the law of averages, human nature, and corporate corruption - that not all 10,000 trusted partners also deletes our location data history.
Google does take privacy preserving steps to anonymyze what it shares.
My education opinion is that no amount of attempted anonymozation is sufficient for the breadth, scope and quantity of data that Google collections.
Shorter answer for you: yes, I believe that is a corporate lie. True only in technicality, but likely false by any reasonable persons expectation of what "delete" means.
TL;DR - Google makes (arguably insane) claim that it previously acted responsibly with regards to fingerprinting, and says they will begin acting irresponsibility with fingerprinting in February.
Practical take-aways you probably already knew:
- Today's Google may do or say anything to make an extra nickel.
- Today's Google, while it employs some excellent privacy minded engineers, has not demonstrated an organizational commitment to user privacy.
- It is probably wise to assume that the next serious data breach at Google will end marriages, get politicians arrested, get famous people canceled, fuel successful scammers, and have every other privacy impact you can imagine. We know the Google data pool is massive, and we have reason to believe it is incredibly personal. I'm aware that Google has anonymozation solutions in play, and I do not believe those solutions will be effective in a breach scenario.
- I believe that the average person will likely be better off ten years from now if they interact less with Google services.
Like Google maps:
we anonymize your data before selling it. So it leaves your address every morning and goes to your office every morning but it's completely anonymous.
Exactly. I don't think I'm alone in feeling that Google's clever privacy engineering isn't enough to keep any of us safe.
Google's expectation that we be okay with these practices feels like corporate gaslighting, to me.
Thanks! The article was a bit of a tough read for me. Lol
Ditto!
I didn't see anything about the implications of this on the EU and GDPR?
You should know when and how you are being tracked, and you should have an easy-button to say thanks, but no thanks.
Opt-out!? That's not even close to being a good solution.
Your data should not be collected, and you should not be tracked, UNLESS you agree yo it, ie opt-in, AND data collection is proportional/appropriate for the stated goal.
That's the spirit of GDPR.
*laughs in LineageOS
Laughs in GrapheneOS.
Pretty sure Graphene doesn't do much about fingerprinting on its own, it's nearly entirely up to the browser. They mention some of their plans to address that with Vanadium, but make no claims as to how effective it is now (at least on the features page).
What's a Chrome?
I think you put that on your motorbike's tubes and stuff
Google it
Ok, if you say so. I have IceCat and Librewolf on computer and FREE Browser on phone.
Glad I don't use any Google services and no apps on graphene OS then for my main computers I run Fedora silverblue with no Google once again.
Yes but do you use PiHole and a solid VPN? Do you spoof your browser's useragent? Even then, some would argue that you are not safe enough from Google's prying eyes.
Doesn't matter, your browser will be fingerprinted with some embedded JavaScript that works in all modern browsers. Detecting VPNs is also trivial.
Map car retreats around corner