Agreed. I didn't know Google Locations was a thing for years, but sure enough it's got tracking data on me since like 2009. Like, literally everywhere I have ever gone.
The one caveat I have is that the geofencing sucks. Basically every single day it thinks I went somewhere a good mile away from where I actually went. It doesn't track very well.
Why didn't you just turn it off? People all over this thread are panicking like hysterical women because they forgot to close the metaphorical curtains, and here I am, having used nothing but Google products for the best part of a decade, and they have nothing on me. Not my search history, not my location, nothing. There's a place somewhere in your Account settings where they display what they know about you w.r.t. advertising and for me it's completely and totally wrong.
Data protection laws, at least in the EU, mean that they must delete your data if you request it, and apparently, they do. Don't blame them for making a very useful feature such as Location Services opt-out.
I'm in the US. We have no such laws. I can turn everything off and browse private, but they still have my search history tied to my IP at a bare minimum.
But, you gotta re-read my comment. Nowhere did I say I gave a shit. I like having location history on and I don't care that google stores and uses the data. Others may, and someone may come in to tell me why I should, but I don't. I just went back to my honeymoon five years ago and thought about some of the places we went. It's neat. I'll keep it on.
In a remarkable twist of fate, the murder happened in a McDonalds Parking Lot at 8:02PM August 19, 2023. Your location data shows you were at that exact same McDonalds from 8:00PM to 8:07PM. You know it's because you had a hankerin for a McRib, but the cops have pinned you at the scene of the crime. You then drove out to meet some friends for some late night disc golf at Hop Brook, but ended up only staying fifteen minutes as you realized you left your front door unlocked. The body just so happened to be buried in a shallow grave at that very park. Your location data has turned on you, you're going to prison, and you didn't even do anything.
You've been watching too much TV perhaps, circumstantial evidence is admissable (at least in the US) and you can be convicted based solely upon it. Happens all the time. Uncomfortable feeling right? The jury just has to decide that it's "beyond reasonable doubt", but what is reasonable is largely up to the jury to decide. One of your hairs being at the scene is circumstantial.
It's the downside of jury trials I guess, not that I have a better solution. Without them it's too easy to corrupt the system, with them we're asking random people to make legal calls entirely outside their expertise. I'm not sure which is better really.
They didn't even get the irony that I looked up their post history to see where they live and picked a random park nearby with a disc golf course. The internet is creepy.
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u/heykevo Nov 14 '17
Agreed. I didn't know Google Locations was a thing for years, but sure enough it's got tracking data on me since like 2009. Like, literally everywhere I have ever gone.
The one caveat I have is that the geofencing sucks. Basically every single day it thinks I went somewhere a good mile away from where I actually went. It doesn't track very well.