Google is pushing location data to devices and purging it on servers. From a citation within my comment I’ve cited below:
> This change means that Google will no longer respond to geofence warrants from law enforcement that request information on all devices near a particular incident.
That is definitely not true for everyone who has had their Google account for years, because back then, location data was an opt-out feature.
I definitely never actively opted in, and Google never disabled the tracking to force previous tacit consenters to opt in to account for the cultural shift from opt-out to opt-in, which probably happened in the early 2010s?
Location history is really just a setting asking if you want to see your own location data.
All of your location data from the E911 system through to Google Play Services and on to maps, etc is constantly being collected then sold and collated among all these companies.
It is impossible on a modern cellphone to fully disable reporting of your location to any provider in the stack.
I run GrapheneOS on my phone and have all location permissions denied for everything except for (offline) Organic Maps. I also make it a habit of keeping airplane mode enabled except on the (very) rare occasion when I need to make an outbound phone call while out of the house. With the recent revelations about the triangulated location data that AT&T left exposed for all of its customers I don't feel like this is an overreaction.
Is there an alternative to google location history that is privacy friendly? I like the feature during trips to record where I went. Maybe just me but when I get a bit nostalgic I like to retrace my steps and find again some lost memories/places.
toomuchtodo ·186 days ago
> This change means that Google will no longer respond to geofence warrants from law enforcement that request information on all devices near a particular incident.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40869536
(edit to fix my mistake, thank you Centigonal!)
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Quarondeau ·186 days ago
I definitely never actively opted in, and Google never disabled the tracking to force previous tacit consenters to opt in to account for the cultural shift from opt-out to opt-in, which probably happened in the early 2010s?
treebeard901 ·186 days ago
All of your location data from the E911 system through to Google Play Services and on to maps, etc is constantly being collected then sold and collated among all these companies.
It is impossible on a modern cellphone to fully disable reporting of your location to any provider in the stack.
steelframe ·186 days ago
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Sytten ·186 days ago
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