I proceeded to disable the "Run in background" almost every application, kept only a handful that are really needed (e.g. Signal). Since then my battery lasts for 3 days, and my "Access Log" only moves minimally.
Can’t the app just buffer all that data (including time stamps) and just send it when you use it again?
Or is the app truly “turned off”?
There are OS battery optimisations which kick in eventually though, which result in most non system apps to be stopped automatically to save battery. Once again, they won't startup in the background again until being manually launched. This is my general understanding gained from working for a couple of years on an Android app that runs in the background and receives silent notifications.
I don't leave 'everything on default' in the power/background running settings, and thus I don't give the apps the option to do what the device decidsd. Plus with the firewall I Block all the nasties (e.g. 31.13.x.x - FB, or the various IPs for ads and tracking).
I'm a recent convert to iOS (I've used Android for 7+ years) and I find that it "phones home" a lot less than Android. You can easily run a Wireshark and confirm it yourself.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/idle-android-ph...
>Both Android and Chrome send data to Google even in the absence of any user interaction. Our experiments show that a dormant, stationary Android phone (with Chrome active in the background) communicated location information to Google 340 times during a 24-hour period, or at an average of 14 data communications per hour. In fact, location information constituted 35% of all the data samples sent to Google. In contrast, a similar experiment showed that on an iOS Apple device with Safari (where neither Android nor Chrome were used), Google could not collect any appreciable data (location or otherwise) in the absence of a user interaction with the device.
>While using an iOS device, if a user decides to forgo the use of any Google product (i.e. no Android, no Chrome, no Google applications), and visits only non-Google webpages, the number of times data is communicated to Google servers still remains surprisingly high. This communication is driven purely by advertiser/publisher services. The number of times such Google services are called from an iOS device is similar to an Android device. In this experiment, the total magnitude of data communicated to Google servers from an iOS device is found to be approximately half of that from the Android device.
[0] https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DC...
Apple spends something like 1 billion dollars a year on Apple Maps. There is no strategic reason for them to do maps. They aren't making money from it. They are anonymising the statistics they gather. They chose to spend this insane amount of money doing something completely foreign to them just so their customers don't have to use Google Maps.
Let that sink in.
It's incredible.
As for the quality of Apple Maps—yes, it was rubbish when it first launched but today it is usually (depending on your city and your specific usages) within cooee of equally good. In fact I tend to find Apple Maps often superior for walking and public transport directions in an unfamiliar city.
They both spend lots of money on maps in the hope that users will use those maps on each corporations platform. The difference is Apple makes money selling the device and services, Google makes money selling your attention to advertisers.
The real driving force for Apple to spend that money was Google restricting features in their iOS app.
Also, it was leaked somewhere that Google was willing to give iOS all the features as long as Apple would allow all the user tracking. I can't speak to how reliable that is, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I don't need the best possible mapping application, I just (occasionally) need one that's "good enough". More and more, for me, "good enough" means keeping a static image of the maps of the area that I'll be in.
Pretty much all "no root firewalls" work the same way.. The software pretends to be a VPN client in order to get the network traffic and filter it.
Since you're letting the software have control over all your network traffic, make sure you trust the software manufacturer.
This is why I stick with root firewalls -- I also use a VPN, and I don't think you can have your Android device use more than one VPN at a time (without rooting it).
Google is the most invasive and predatory attack on privacy ever; by no small margin.
Can you prove this? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that's a real whopper of a claim.
I wonder how it is that they think Google rationalises providing so many free or below cost products to consumers?
Edit: downvoted without response. K.
> it's literally what google claim to do
It's literally the opposite of what Google claims to do.
> they sell their ability to know everything about you to anyone willing to pay for that information
This does not actually claim they will sell you a copy of the raw data. That is Google’s “crown jewels” and they protect it fairly well, although not always perfectly.
In the past you could see the query on a referral URL. In the past you could see PII coming through this way as well. You could target ads against this PII, etc.
But anyway, what Google does is let you target ads based on their absolute knowledge of the user. What you are Searching for, where you are Searching for it, etc.
Google tracks you incensently so that they can more effectively sell things to you, or sell others the ability to sell things to you.
But increasingly it seems that Google tracks its users just because it can. Just in case that clickstream or that app history or that voice recording might become useful someday. Google tracks you like a paranoid government might track its citizens, afraid that some scrap of data might come back one day to be useful in its almighty question for [control / dollars / training an AI / optimization / whatever].
The nominal cost of storing one more piece of metadata is zero, the potential future value seemingly limitless, and perhaps the fear of Management asking for some piece of data you didn’t think to record is so great, they seem to just record all the things.
That's fair. That was my misreading of their original comment. I'm so used to seeing this misinformation I took it as just another example.
>But anyway, what Google does is let you target ads based on their absolute knowledge of the user.
That's right. The page I linked from Google is actually very transparent about how it works.
Which means what?
If you aren't actually getting user information, then simply put you aren't buying user information. Anything else is twisting words to distort their meanings.
Google has information about you. Incredibly detailed, intimate information about you. Harvested by collecting and correlating all of your usage of their products and services.
Anyone can pay Google to use that knowledge in pursuit of other services, like targeted ads. No, you do not get access to that knowledge directly, but Google has it and is using it when paid to do so.
In effect, you can pay Google to have indirect use of that knowledge.
And to anyone who says “I have nothing to hide” — imagine your worst enemy having all this information about you easily searchable with the intention to weaponize it for their purpose.
To anyone saying that, they need to stop quoting Nazi propaganda. Term is coined by (but not originating from) Goebbels.
Note: The origin is from a fictional dystopia.
The phrase is too frequently used by societies that we consider to not be free, being pervasive enough that a single use in literature would tell you that the characters live in an oppressive regime. Yet somehow we can make that connection but don't make it when actual politicians and citizens repeat it.
Personally I feel sickened that the phrase is so pervasive in our society (goes beyond the US). Just as I'd be if people were constantly saying "Work will set you free."
We will have to use punishment as deterrent for someone who is harming other with all of this information.
Yes, this is why I've decided to bail on the smartphone nonsense as well.
To make the problem worse, it isn't just Google you need to protect yourself from. You also need to protect yourself from the vast majority of apps that are out there as well.
It's become an intractable security nightmare, and I no longer consider smartphones as fit for purpose.
I knew they tracked search. I knew they would use my voice usage to make it better. I didn't realize how pathological they were in tracking literally everything I did with my phone and tying it to my account, down to what apps I opened and when. It's creepy as hell.
It really made me want to just exit this whole smartphone shitfest, because I have to assume they're still tracking all this data, just not making it visible. Maybe Apple is better, maybe not. The problem is I can't know for sure, and if they lie - what could I do about it anyways?