>I know Google is profiling me and harvesting my data. But it's not using me to harvest my friends information.
But is it not though?
Because it analyzes any emails I send to your gmail account, and any SMS messages I send to your android phone. Google will argue about data vs metadata, but really it's all just data, and it's as much about me as it is you. I don't know if Google pioneered shadow profiling, but they certainly perfected it.
My room mate got a pair of home mini's over my explicit objections. He insisted that they send "bytes per hour tops" back to google when idle, and that I was just paranoid for hating them. I did some network inspection to validate that for myself.
They pretty much ceaselessly probe my network, mostly with multicast traffic, and are uploading something in the area of hundreds of kilobytes per minute when idle. I can't tell what they're uploading because they're using secure connections (presumably with pinned certificates, although I haven't checked), but if I were to baselessly speculate, I would guess they are discovering, logging and reporting the comings and goings of android phones on my network so google can follow people as they move from one home to another, possibly mapping IP's to locations.
Now for sure, I'm a lot further down the tinfoil scale than most people, but I disagree with you. As someone who actively works to avoid google, my friends sure do keep inflicting it on me.
But is it not though?
Because it analyzes any emails I send to your gmail account, and any SMS messages I send to your android phone. Google will argue about data vs metadata, but really it's all just data, and it's as much about me as it is you. I don't know if Google pioneered shadow profiling, but they certainly perfected it.
My room mate got a pair of home mini's over my explicit objections. He insisted that they send "bytes per hour tops" back to google when idle, and that I was just paranoid for hating them. I did some network inspection to validate that for myself.
They pretty much ceaselessly probe my network, mostly with multicast traffic, and are uploading something in the area of hundreds of kilobytes per minute when idle. I can't tell what they're uploading because they're using secure connections (presumably with pinned certificates, although I haven't checked), but if I were to baselessly speculate, I would guess they are discovering, logging and reporting the comings and goings of android phones on my network so google can follow people as they move from one home to another, possibly mapping IP's to locations.
Now for sure, I'm a lot further down the tinfoil scale than most people, but I disagree with you. As someone who actively works to avoid google, my friends sure do keep inflicting it on me.