> I discovered that www.google.com was also accessing my Chrome browser's location, and I can not recall when I said "yes" to any such location prompt
This is the worst when traveling through Europe. Cross a border and suddenly all Google services are in a language you don't speak.
I really hate that and I do speak quite a few.
It is not only the UI language that changes, the search results do as well.
Suddenly something that was easy to find becomes a mess of local results with similar names or machine translated, even though I used the original language name.
Note that this is often done based on your IP address if you've not opted-in.
It's often a quirk when using CCC (Chaos Computer Club) IP addresses at events in other countries; you'll be looking at google.de for the first couple of days until google correlates enough location data from people that have opted-in to correct the IP location.
On the plus side it means that a personal VPN with no opted-in devices will give you your home-region services (ymmv).
Google likes to ignore the Accept-Language header. Obviously they know better than you and your browser what language they should use!
The top comment is describing the positive advances in privacy. I think you jumped the gun -- may be worth a second look.
Re:Introducing Android 9 Pie
by anonytrary on Monday August 06, 2018 @10:47PM
(#17703557)
And I'm adding the NB: While they have better app-level restrictions, the real question is whether or not Google uses this information for their new ML-powered OS features.
I just wish there was a global "NO NO and NO!" override button for any kind of "help make your service better by using your personal information" feature. Just recently, I discovered that www.google.com was also accessing my Chrome browser's location, and I can not recall when I said "yes" to any such location prompt. It's a bit sad -- I think of these features as being intentionally obfuscated similarly to how Facebook intentionally obfuscates their "account deletion" mechanism.
I'm afraid the majority of people just don't care about these needlessly nosy "smart" systems, and I'm probably going to suffer from it as someone in the privacy-niche.