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Android Users Need To Delete Google Maps and Google Play If They Don't Want Their Locations Tracked (theregister.co.uk)
Kieren McCarthy, reporting for The Register: Google, it seems, is very, very interested in knowing where you are at all times. Users have reported battery life issues with the latest Android build, with many pointing the finger at Google Play -- Google's app store -- and its persistent, almost obsessive need to check where you are. Amid complaints that Google Play is always switching on GPS, it appears Google has made it impossible to prevent the app store from tracking your whereabouts unless you completely kill off location tracking for all applications. You can try to deny Google Play access to your handheld's location by opening the Settings app and digging through Apps -> Google Play Store -> Permissions, and flipping the switch for "location." But you'll be told you can't just shut out Google Play services: you have to switch off location services for all apps if you want to block the store from knowing your whereabouts. It's all or nothing, which isn't particularly nice. This is because Google Play services pass on your location to installed apps via an API. The store also sends your whereabouts to Google to process. Google doesn't want you to turn this off.
I guess nobody noticed that maps.google.com now goes to www.google.com/maps, which means you have to give the entire site permission to access your location to let it use your location.
I'm sure a GPS location spoofer, if such a thing exists, is highly illegal and would get you in big trouble to use it. GPS signals are on a licensed part of the spectrum, and interfering with those frequencies can cause not just your GPS device to fail, but possibly others around you. GPS is used in in some life or death applications, such as air navigation, so I imagine the feds would take this kind of spoofing very, very seriously.
I believe schle means a software-based location spoofer that feeds a false location to the app in question, instead of messing with the actual connection to the GPS satellites.
Try to understand. Google is a company. They need to make money.
They made their money when I bought the goddamn phone. If they don't feel like they made *enough* money, they should have charged more for the phone and/or licensing Android, not spying and selling out and digitally violating all of their users 24 hours a day.
Samsung, HTC, et al made money when you bought the goddamn phone. Google makes money in services, like the one this article is about.
Are you new to the concept of publicly traded corporations? There is no such thing as making enough money. They have to find new revenue streams every year or else their shareholders bail.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yes, Android spying is really bad but that doesn't make it right for Windows to do the same thing. It looks even worse because PC OSs didn't use to do that.
What I hate most about this is that they don't give you the option to opt out of spying by paying some money. I'd gladly do it. Both on Android and on Windows. But. again, neither one gives you that option.
Amazon got it right with the Kindle: You can have it cheaper with ads or you can pay some more and have no ads
I only turn on GPS when I want to use it, why waste the battery?
Cheap storage VM.
"Turning off" your phone's GPS doesn't actually disable the capability. All phones with GPS are required to be able to use it, even if it's turned off, so it can relay your location if you happen to call 911. So it's not like a hardware switch which powers down the GPS chip.
The title of the submission doesn't match the summary. Summary states this can be defeated by turning off all location services (same as the iPhone). You don't have to delete Maps and Play as the title states. This being Android, if enough people are upset about it, someone will create a widget which lets you change the setting with a single tap whenever you want.
I wrestled with it a few years back (when I finally got a phone whose battery would last all day even with GPS on), and eventually decided to leave GPS on all the time. Yes Google uses it to track me, but it's one of those things where you give up a little bit of your privacy (location) in exchange for useful services (real-time traffic updates). It's kinda like bittorrent. Nobody wants to seed because it sucks up your bandwidth, but without seeders the service stops working. People who expect real-time traffic while leaving their GPS off are essentially leechers. And I decided considering how heavily I use real-time traffic, it was my civic duty to leave the GPS on.
Also, one of the bugs I've encountered in Marshmallow is that sometimes battery life plummets with the battery use monitor saying it's the Android system which is consuming it. I eventually figured out this was linked to location services somehow getting "stuck" on in Google Play. The fix is to uninstall the updates for Google Play Services, then allow Android to re-update it. I wonder if that's the same bug causing the battery drain reported in Nougat in TFA.
The so called 'security researcher' got confused with Google Nearby https://support.google.com/acc... . Google also moved core android OS functions into Google Play Services so core functions could be updated without rolling an entire android update(which the oem would never do). Moving the location provider was part of the this rework, so everyone could get the latest google maps turn by turn directions and provide a consistent api to developers http://lifehacker.com/why-goog....
There's a lot of misunderstanding here of how location and tracking on Android actually works.
First of all, google play store has nothing to do with it. It's google play services that provides location services and implements location tracking in Android. That's the service that is used to retrieve AGPS data from the net, to correlate nearby wifi and mobile masts with lists held on google's servers to give location without GPS, and yes to provide tracking data on your location to google. Setting the location mode to "GPS Only" or similar is supposed to disable much of the tracking, but I'm not sure how much I'd trust that.
Play services is a pretty core component of Android, and an awful lot of things will cease to function if you manage to remove it. You can block play services from accessing your location using 3rd party tools like XPrivacy, but location for most apps will cease to function without a complex set of workarounds.
If you genuinely don't want your Android phone calling home with your location while still being able to use GPS, you need:
Thanks google...