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Google Map App's Version of Anonymity Might Violate EU Privacy Laws
Ars Technica reports that Google's map application for iOS, however popular it might be with users, raises red flags with European regulators, who maintain that it by default does not sufficiently safeguard user privacy as required by EU privacy rules. Ars quotes Marit Hansen of Germany's Independent Centre for Privacy Protection on why: "Hansen's main gripe is that Google's use of 'anonymous' is misleading. 'All available information points to having linkable identifiers per user," she told Computerworld. Hansen added this would allow Google to track several location entries, thus leading to her assumption that Google's 'anonymous location data' would be considered 'personal data' under the European law."
if you ask google for directions for a to b then they need to know what a and b are.
True, but they don't need to know who is asking nor that the same person five minutes earlier searched for adult stores.
Or if you are irritated by a countries laws, don't do business there.
Perhaps you don't care, but I do.
Have anybody ever asked you for directions? Please tell me the exact time and date, where he or she was before and when after. This can even be a person close to you.
You can't? Google can and that is why you should not compare individual situations with the ones that are done by companies who use a database.
The fact that you do not care about your privacy does not stop me fighting for it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
*sigh* Does anyone even read the fucking summary any more?
The problem is that when you ask to "anonymous", your data is not actually anonymized. They can send directions for getting from A to B and then discard all personally identifying information, which is what a normal person would expect if they selected "anonymous".
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
On Android, I can turn off all the "location" services anytime I'm not using GPS. Saves the battery from being eaten by GPS. Does iPhone give this option?
iPhone doesn't work quite like that. The GPS radio is never left on all the time.
There is an option to never allow it to come on of course, but even with that switched on, the GPS only gets activated when an app needs to use it and you allowed that app to.
It also shows a GPS icon in the title bar whenever an app is actively using it.
When an app first runs, the OS asks you if you want to allow location services for this app. If you click no the API won't return that data.
If you click yes, it adds it to the list of allowed GPS apps.
You can pull this list up under Settings at any time to remove an app after you have already allowed it.
Basically battery life only takes a hit when you see that icon, and that icon only shows up while in an app you allowed to use it. Once you flip back to springboard (aka the launcher) or into another app, it gets shut off again.
The issue is Google collecting data on where you've been. That's not to serve you. It's to serve the interests of Google.
It's one of the reasons Apple wouldn't accept Google's conditions for adding turn-by-turn navigation to the old Google Maps app.
SImple. You don't have a persistent ID associated with all requests from the app. The problem is not that a location is sent to the server as part of a request. It's that it's associated with a persistent ID and stored by Google.
I have to say I was surprised at how insistent the new iOS application is at trying to determine your location. Every time you go into it it asks for location services to be turned on. You can skip by it, but that would be the type of setting that with other programs would be a choice only made once, not pestering every time.
It's also interesting how, when you click on a link in the newest versions of Google's iOS apps, they don't send you to Safari - they open up their own browsing window.
#DeleteChrome
"I want turn by turn directions, and for you to redirect me when I make a wrong turn, but I don't want you to know where I'm located or where I'm headed".
None of that follows from what I said.