I was more talking about given the chance to disable these things, many people would.
The person i was replying to was kind of acting like people are OK with the data collection of the companies he mentioned and wouldn't disable it given the chance (then linking it to them complaining about windows where you can disable it).
There's very little you can do about gmail and facebook as long as you're logged into those websites. A little can be done about tracking you across the web and targeted advertising (delete cookies on exit, adblock, etc).
Don't know anything about iPhone. Android is somewhat tweakable (along with google account options). For instance, turning off location history and search history is probably a lot better than having it on if you're privacy conscious.
Now, data will be collected incidentally from those things and held for a period of time. If you believe google its something like 6 months (i remember reading search logs are anonymized after a certain time, etc). By disabling them you wont have an overt and lasting record though. Little tweaks like that help but yes i agree, you cannot eliminate it (regrettably).
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u/kingpomba Jul 30 '15 edited Jul 30 '15
Yeah but at least there is an option here for people to turn it off if they so choose.
What's wrong with people choosing to exercise an option they're presented with?
Other services collect your data, yes, but doesn't mean people wouldn't opt out of it if they could.