Slashdot Mirror
New Google Trusted Contacts Service Shares User Location In Real Time (onthewire.io)
Reader Trailrunner7 writes: Google has spent a lot of time and money on security over the last few years, developing new technologies and systems to protect users' devices. One of the newer technologies the company has come up with is designed to provide security for users themselves rather than their laptops or phones.
On Monday Google launched a new app for Android called Trusted Contacts that allows users to share their locations and some limited other information with a set of close friends and family members. The system is a two-way road, so a user can actively share her location with her Trusted Contacts, and stop sharing it at her discretion. But, when a problem or potential emergency comes up, one of those contacts can request to get that user's location to see where she is at any moment. The app is designed to give users a way to reassure contacts that they're safe, or request help if there's something wrong.
On Monday Google launched a new app for Android called Trusted Contacts that allows users to share their locations and some limited other information with a set of close friends and family members. The system is a two-way road, so a user can actively share her location with her Trusted Contacts, and stop sharing it at her discretion. But, when a problem or potential emergency comes up, one of those contacts can request to get that user's location to see where she is at any moment. The app is designed to give users a way to reassure contacts that they're safe, or request help if there's something wrong.
The real take-away is that Google will also know your location. Wrapping it up in a sheep's skin of user-convenience is their Modus Operandi.
Trolling is a art,
I worked on a business looking at doing this back in 1999. Trusted companion it was called. We even had coverage on BBC.
Wonder if Googlr will do something with it properly?
We never got started since we wanted to focus on other better opportunities at that time
Can I share trusted info with "close friends and family members" without sharing it with YOU? No? That's what I thought.
No thanks. I'm not interested in volunteering still more data about myself to add to the already humongous pile you already possess.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
"Why aren't you allowing me to see where you are? Don't you trust me? I thought we were good friends?/We are your parents!" Teaching people that it is socially unacceptable to be untrackable in real life is crossing the line to the dark side, Google.
You can just see thousands of divorce lawyers rejoicing (and petitioning Google to make this the default on all family accounts...wait, do they have family accounts?)
Isn't this the same as the Lattitude service they used to offer a few years ago? What's the news?
That's a lot of words to say Google cloned Find My Friends...
It's called "Find My Friends" on iOS, you can share your location temporarily which is great for when you are travelling with friends. I have it permanently enabled with my brothers, easier than having to phone/message them to find out how far away they are when we meet up.
Otherwise, while I wouldn't enable it until a relationship becomes serious, my girlfriend (of 3 years now) and I have had it permanently enabled with each other since we moved in together. It's very good for peace of mind and was especially useful when she was unfortunately involved in a serious car accident as I was able to locate her very quickly.
Considering that iOS has a reputation for generally lagging behind Android in features, I'm quite surprised this has only now arrived on Android when Apple has had it for years.
Of course if you value your privacy greatly, steer clear, I'm not worried, but each to their own I guess.
This is a handy feature. I hope Google takes the time to improve on Apple's location sharing in iMessages instead of merely copying it.
Technically there's no way for them to be sure of where YOU are. However, this does provide a way to know where YOUR PHONE is.
If your location and your phone's location are the same then it is more accurate than if they are not, in which case you can only track one of them reliably.
At the heart of the problem for all US business is an Executive branch that does stuff in secret. Only two days ago, the FBI's re-interpretation of laws, to let them hack any machine anywhere, this became law by virtue of the failure of Senate to block it.
So Google can write as many privacy features in as they like, when Trump runs the executive branch, a provable liar who didn't win as many votes and is mentally unsuited to lead, is in charge of the surveillance machine. And the poor limits on the executive branch become a serious issue for America.
Next comes a GPS fence, an area you're not allowed to leave without triggering an alarm. People will learn just to turn off their phones, so power loss will trigger an alarm too. The benefit of the doubt will be removed and suspicion will be default.
After that comes the phone that can't be turned off. People will learn to leave their phones behind, so after that comes the phone integrated into the body. At that point it won't even be called a phone any more.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The best security is not to use deliberate dumb down AI-vendors like Google at all. If you have to use it, do so as anonymously as you can. If you have allowed your brain to go aloof to the point that it is too dysfunctional to do for itself what AI-machine learning technocrats claim to be able to do "so you don't have to think about it", then you're human-ing wrong.
So, they're bringing back Google Latitude, except with fewer features and making it harder to use?
Sounds like Google, alright.
Incomplete list of potential emergencies:
1.Your boss wants to know where you are on your sick day
2. Your jealous spouse wants to know if you are in the office working late
3. Your parents want to know why you are late for your daily check-in call
4. Your congregation wants to know if you are checking other parishes
5. A technology-aware burglar wants to know how long they have to finish loading your stuff into the van
The more immediate threat (at least until 01/20/2017) is to domestic violence victims. Abusers won't need to install special tracking apps on their victim's device. They just need to enable this feature. And before someone comments on the attacker needing physical access to the device, they oftentimes have it in these situations.
If you're going to lie...
Any added security that Google has put in is to ensure they have a monopoly on selling you out to the highest bidder.
not to have a "smart" phone.
When I'm on vacation I don't want people to know where I'm at because the point of vacation is to get away from them. I'll call you when I'm at my next destination and only then will you know where I'm at.
A dumb flip phone. One of the greatest technological gifts of our times.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
... will Google be making with this?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This technology already all existed in 2005, before phones. It was only a matter of time after GPS and direct internet cellular data were incorporated into phones that the application to integrate into such systems would be written.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"Why aren't you allowing me to see where you are? Don't you trust me? I thought we were good friends?/We are your parents!" Teaching people that it is socially unacceptable to be untrackable in real life is crossing the line to the dark side, Google.
Crossing the line can be summed up in one word; Facebook.
Let's not pretend Google invented the concept of sharing your entire fucking life as a socially acceptable demand.
All you have to do is say, "No." The problem with society isn't that technology enables invasions of privacy, or even that tech companies leverage social pressures to legitimize invasions of privacy: it's that users don't have the balls to say "no" to their friends, partners, colleagues, employers, parents, and whoever else in the social graph expects more tracking. At some point, people need to set some boundaries on what their friends, significant others, et al get to know and what they don't get to know. Until then, users won't have any reason to say "no" to the tracking companies.
How is Google teaching anyone that?
No intelligent and informed user would really trust any online service from anybody, evil or not.
being watched by your parents in near real time. I'm a pretty lazy parent (single father for a variety of reasons, none of them good) so I wasn't very protective. The upshot to this is my kid doesn't have a lot to rebel against besides her old man's crap job. So instead of wasting her time rebelling against them 'man' she's focused on studying so as to avoid the mistakes I made, most of which she can see the results of through observation rather than by me hammering them into her skull.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Discounting social pressure is a recipe for failure. It exists, it works. It is definitely not OK to leverage it for profit. Yes, you can say no, but when corporations stack the deck against you, you can play any way you want, you're still going to lose.
It has been correctly observed that this product isn't new. It's Google Latitude. What's changed is how Google intends to make people share this information. Instead of approaching the people who might want to share their location with others, now they're approaching people who want others to share location information with them. And to make it effective, they're using one of the strongest emotions in existence: fear. Combined with the implied accusation that your "privacy" causes friends and relatives to worry about you, yes, Google has set it up to teach people that not sharing your location is socially unacceptable.
As someone who doesn't partake in a few common activities and knows the looks you get when you say "no", let me tell you: Google knows exactly what they're doing there.
...they already had this functionality built into an existing app - G+ I think. This just makes it easier to manage...finding the setting in the existing app is always a PITA and it's not easy to manage at all. So yeah, it'd be great to have this better supported.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
My point is that people need to learn to say no in order to reverse the expectations of social pressure. This isn't new - it's Patrick McGoohan's message in The Prisoner. Social pressure is made up of the expectations of individuals, because society is made up of individuals: the more individuals stand up to social pressure and demand privacy for themselves, the more social pressure changes to value privacy. You change society by changing individual minds.
So if enough people overcome social pressure, then we can have privacy? How is that not discounting the impact of social pressure? You should not allow corporations to wield this powerful tool, and shrug it off with "you can say no", because doing it like that practically guarantees that you'll lose. Google is changing the minds of many individuals. How many are you changing by saying no?
Change it to: "Why aren't you allowing me to see where you are? Don't you trust me? I thought we were good friends?/I'm your vindictive ex-wife!"
Puts a whole new perspective on things.
So don't start the app, and don't enable it on bootup when you don't want it (my Asus phone has built-in software to control startup apps, really helps battery life too), and turn off the telemetry settings in general when not in use.
Honestly, they've had similar functionality which used to be baked into maps anyhow. I used the former when on long trips down icy highways so that my wife/family could see that I didn't end up in a ditch somewhere. If the cost of such is that Google wants to watch my 8h+ haul during those times, I don't really care much.
What are they going to do, advertise that McDonalds has discount hot coffee and suggest a pit-stop partway through my trip?
Any other time it's turned off and the locator functionality for the whole phone is turned off to save battery life anyhow.
But seriously, I have been using this exact same functionality for over 2 years on my iPhone and iPads. What gives with Google's "new" features getting front-page attention?
I'd actually be willing to pay money to Google to use their services if they wouldn't gather any data from me.
How you'd guarantee they're not keeping it anyway I don't know, but if they offered it and somehow you could be reasonably sure they aren't actually storing anything I'd pay.
GPS Family Locator (GPS Tracker)
My new girlfriend(!) and I have hooked ourselves up to this. It's moderately useful in that I get a ding when she leaves work or arrives here, or if I check I can see how far away she is -- 5 minutes or 35. It'll also ding on entering/exiting selected places as well.
Purchasing it *WILL* track history, so I can see exactly where her phone has been for the last month. And vice versa. (And so can the company. And Google. And the cell company. And the shadow PI following me. And my CC breadcrumbs. Whatever, I'm not that interesting. But not 4square or facebook though.)
I don't care if she knows where I go / went. I've shown her how to remove her entry or even the entire app so she can disappear if she wants, I'll leave myself plugged in. After all, if I wanted to be nefarious and disappear I'll just run on a alternate (or burner) phone, leaving the GPS tracker at home. Or "shudder" be like 1980 and go naked withOUT one.
Just a happy user, that's all.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?