Slashdot Mirror
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 love Big Brother. Don't you love Big Brother? Maybe you need re-education.
It won't be long before they start selling intrusive ads based on location, time of day, etc. It's around lunch time and you're walking on the street? Your phone buzzes to recommend a restaurant for you. That kind of advertisement could be sold to restaurants based on location, time of day, implied salary, whether you frequent a competitor, etc.
You won't even know where you are.
"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.
This should be modded way down. "Not buying the product" on an individual level does SHIT to change corporate behavior.
Yes you are right. Keep buying their shit and giving them money, but come here and whine about it. You know how to affect change. You are truly a revolutionary my friend.
Plus, giving up that fancy smartphone would be HARD. No Angry Birds. No Snapchat. It's not a life worth living.
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...