The _title_ of the article says "Google tracks users who turn off location history", and the article further develops the claim. Yes, Google offers the option to "turn off Location History". No, turning off Location History doesn't stop Google from tracking your location by other means. Google engages in physical world surveillance against the express instructions of its users, misleading them in the process.

Not cool.

Google allows you to turn off the Location History feature AND allows you to stop giving out your location.

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. The setting was at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

This is example #687 of why not to trust Google or any other surveillance capitalist.

This is a regrettable, yet a sadly common view. "If you use products by Company X, you must understand they gather an immerse personal profile on you - like it or not. That's just how Company X works! If you don't like that, use a competing product."

Companies are not above law, and the gathering and use of personally identifiable information is regulated for a very good reason in our society (I don't think many Americans were thrilled when their info was leaked in the Equifax breach.) Ultimately, consumers should be able to choose products they use freely without worrying about their privacy being automatically violated. It might not be the case today, as this article shows, but so was establishing a cartel to charge consumers exorbitant prices and bully competition out of business also an acceptable business tactic for most of the 19th century, before anti-trust legislation was enacted.

So I think it's good that reporters an are taking issue when companies engage in questionable practices when applying their users' privacy preferences. Like Google here not stopping collecting a profile of your past locations, even if you turn off a privacy setting titled "Location History".

That's actually regrettable, I agree.

What's more regrettable in my opinion is that piece is inflated in comparison to something like the Equifax scandal because:

1. This is a service you opt in to use (there's competition), you can opt-out off the tracking in 3 clicks, and your data is safe (so far)

2. Equifax leaked the SSN of millions who haven't even subscribed to their service

Anyway, I agree, we can still improve customer privacy and transparency.

> you can opt-out off the tracking in 3 clicks, and your data is safe (so far)

Yes, if you know where to click! But would you have known without reading this that disabling "Location History" does not actually .. well .. disable location history?

    If you want to turn off Location History, which is a feature, a product in itself, you can.

The point is that despite turning off location history, this doesn't stop Google from tracking you and doesn't respect their users privacy when they ask for it.

I think we have lowered the bar for companies like Google far too much. Honestly, it would be reasonable to expect Google not to do any location tracking across any of their services at all, without obvious and explicit approval of the users, granularly service by service, and with the ability to reverse that decision. We should be aiming for opt-in tracking, not opt-out. Fine print in large EULAs, or dark patterns in privacy controls, don't count as genuine opt-in procedures in my opinion.

The second feature you have to disable to limit this tracking is Web And App Activity. This is a bundled feature which means you can't choose the utterly reasonable status "improve my search suggestions but don't use my location". More importantly, the Google Privacy Checkup where you find this setting offers no hint that it involves location monitoring. Here's the text:

"Google is saving your searches and other Google activity. Google is also saving activity such as which apps you use, your Chrome history, and which sites you visit on the web."

I don't see why a reasonable reader would interpret that as building extensive location history. (Well, excluding "because they don't trust Google", which is kind of the point.)

I just checked. First hint is the "GPS icon" on every Search entry and the location is displayed when you click on "Details".

Second, on the Activity Commands, you just have to click on the link to See More and it's explicitly stated that the location is stored.

Where are you looking? I don't see any of the terms or icons you're describing. (I don't doubt you, but Google tends to have multiple ways to access every feature.)

I'm going, on browser, to Privacy -> Your Privacy Controls -> Go To Privacy Checkup -> Start Now. On that screen, Web & App Activity has an overall toggle, a checkbox for including Chrome history and data from sites and apps that use Google services, and a Manage Activity link. There's no GPS icon shown, I genuinely have no idea what the checkbox does (that description covers everything I expect from 'Web & App Activity', so what's left if the toggle is on and the box is off?), and the whole thing is sitting right next to the Location History control in a way that strongly implies location data is in the second area.

The Manage Activity link brings me to a further page with searches and app activations listed, but the description still says nothing about location and I still don't see a GPS icon. I can't check specific searches, because I have this feature turned off. (I turned it on to test, but it doesn't update live.) I don't see Activity Commands or See More anywhere at all.

I also found a second, distinct page called Activity Controls from the privacy menus, with the same toggle/checkbox/manage options but a different description of what the feature does! (The text next to the checkbox is the same, and still completely unclear to me.) No GPS icons or use of the word 'location' here either.

I admit that each of those descriptions mentions Google Maps, but they do so in the context of autocomplete and faster/smarter searches. It looks for all the world like this page is about populating my Maps history by my past searches (which I do want) and not populating it by my location (which I don't want).

So, yes, this feature can be turned off. And I believe you that the specific searches have GPS data if you've got it turned on. But I just spent 20 minutes trying to find any sign that location data is stored here other than opening the details on specific links, using Google's recommended privacy-preservation feature, with instructions from other people, and still failed. This seems like a pretty exotic version of 'transparency'.

Read the article.

Exactly. What's your point?

I read the ones from yesterday, including the AP that started the "scandal". The problem is that since Cambridge Analytica, any piece of privacy issue gets a clickbaity headline for little reason just to get viral, play with fear and emotions, and drive traffic. All of that for ads money from Google. Full circle.

On this story: Headline is "Google tracks users who turn off location history ", sub-headline is "Pretty sneaky", but actually in the article : "We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time".

Read the article. What are the "clear descriptions and robust controls" to turn off the following Google location tracking behaviors:

> Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you open the Maps app

> Automatic weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where a user is

> Searches that have nothing to do with location pinpoint precise longitude and latitude of users

These are all features that people expect to work regardless of what they do with their settings... Why would you want a weather update for somewhere you aren't? If you search drug store should it tell you about the concept of drug stores or the actual drug stores that are down the street? There would be tons of people upset that Google is broken if it didn't take location into account for search.

For weather, I use 2 mechanisms: a. I setup IPhone weather app to my home town location. Works 95% of the time, I'm not traveling that much. b. Search for "<town> weather" when I'm traveling. Browser autocomplete makes this trivial. Fairly easy and doesn't feed Google with a stream of personalized location information.

===

A day in the life of a BigAdCo surveillance apologist:

1. Claim it's obviously easy to disable the tracking behavior.

2. Claim the tracking behavior is absolutely necessary for feature X.

3. Claim that someone else would do the track tracking / is doing the tracking, so BigAdCo must do it to compete. [Notice how this conflicts with 4].

4. Claim that users could just use the competition. [Notice how this conflicts with 3].

5. ???

6. Profit!

Yes, you can manually set cities, but the article cites automatic weather updates. That's the part that requires your location. Knowing where you are is the only way this feature can work. You don't need to use it and if you're happy with "browser autocomplete" vs a widget that shows the current weather then by all means use the browser.

> Knowing where you are is the only way this feature can work.

I'm 100% confident that IPhone weather app updates automatically the weather for my home town. It doesn't need my personalized location, just the location for my home town.

Yes, but that's not what this is. This shows you the weather where you are, regardless of your hometown or if you're there. You can also do this in Apple's weather app, here is what it looks like when you open it for the first time:

https://imgur.com/a/zodvD9g

taking current location into account !== building a cumulative location profile over time without explicit consent

Should it geotag your photo with your current location, assuming you have that feature enabled in the camera app?

Should it use your location to contextualize your query for "pizza near me?" If so, does that mean your browsing history has to be redacted so that it isn't possible later to infer your location from your selection of a candidate restaurant?

I think different people will have different opinions about what constitutes a "cumulative location profile." Google's definition makes intuitive sense to me personally but I can see how there might be other points of view on it.

I can understand the public outrage, but on HN it surprises me that almost everyone seems to think this is a clear case of pure evil.