Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by darren_ on Monday December 10, 2018 @07:34AM (#18647409)

> Also I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Google Maps now remembers searches you've made without location history or app activity tracking being active. This wasn't the case about a year ago, when I last tried it, a dark pattern of sorts. They probably changed the behavior being forced by the GDPR or something similar.

Location history wasn't ever needed for remembering searches, FWIW.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by amaccuish on Monday December 10, 2018 @07:36AM (#18647422)

> Location history wasn't ever needed for remembering searches

It absolutely was. When I tapped on the search bar, there were no results and it told me to turn on location history.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by pjc50 on Monday December 10, 2018 @08:36AM (#18647759)

Just tried this. I have "home" and "work" defined in Saved Places, but if I go to the search bar there are "home" and "work" options which claim not to be set up and won't work until I turn on "web and app history". Hmm.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by darren_ on Monday December 10, 2018 @08:08AM (#18647595)

On iOS, location history absolutely was not required for this. Either its different on android google maps, or you're conflating web and app activity with location history.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by jakobegger on Monday December 10, 2018 @02:40PM (#18650587)

Google Maps used to display a message "please log in to see recent searches" or something like this. Which is ridiculous, there's nothing preventing them from storing search history on the device.

It was really annoying, because there is no back button in the app, so if you search for your hotel, then for a restaurant, and then want to show the hotel again, you had to type the full address again.

They seem to have stopped doing that, it's now possible to use Google Maps on iOS without signing in, and you still see recent searches.

They still display a message "sign in to get better search results". And a second message: "Add your phone contacts to search for their addresses". But it's a lot better than it used to be.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by wendigo on Monday December 10, 2018 @07:45AM (#18647459)

Nonetheless, I actually don’t enjoy seeing my search history accumulate on my device. Half of my searches are just spell checks anyway, the next 40% are just wikipedia shortcuts. Probably less than one in ten searches are genuine queries, to scour for a real result.

The number is small enough that I pretty much can directly remember the thing I was thinking about, and why I searched for it. I don’t even want my device saving my recent searches.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by bad_user on Monday December 10, 2018 @07:54AM (#18647502)

Your preference is not very relevant for people that need to remember their searches though.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by inetknght on Monday December 10, 2018 @08:48AM (#18647835)

People that need to remember their searches should configure their preferences in such a fashion.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by bad_user on Monday December 10, 2018 @10:25AM (#18648522)

Let's not talk past each other. An app can remember preferences and searches locally, without synchronizing them to a central server. Requiring that the server remembers those searches only if you agree to having your activity tracked is a dark pattern.

Which is what we are talking about.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by zaroth on Monday December 10, 2018 @12:28PM (#18649492)

And this is very much still present in the latest version on my iPhone anyway. I still see a big prompt to turn on Web & App Activity I order to “Get the most from Maps” — which includes saving “Work” and “Home” favorites. Boo :-(

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by sa1 on Monday December 10, 2018 @02:53PM (#18650665)

You don't see that prompt if you aren't signed in.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by zaroth on Monday December 10, 2018 @07:18PM (#18652321)

Son of a .... &%$!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers an... by Firadeoclus on Monday December 10, 2018 @08:05AM (#18647575)

This is about location search history in Google Maps, though, not general search history. Personally, I rarely need the latter but I find the former very useful.

[ Parent | on HN ]