All "big tech" are at it, I tried to go to "My Pictures" the other day and microsoft asked me to run my pictures through facial recognition.

They said that by consenting I was asserting I had the consent of anyone who appeared in any of my photos or might appear in future which is insane to ask of anyone, no-one can really give that third party consent.

Then when I refused they showed me a nag screen which didn't have that warning.

Then just yesterday I opened google camera and it really wanted to run face recognition on my photos. I refused.

I wanted to try the google podcasts but it was a brick because I had disabled "youtube & web activity" in google account settings. There was no way to subscribe to podcasts without web activity, the application said. And without subscribing there was nothing the app could do.

We have a company claiming that because I don't consent to have my web and youtube activity tracked that there's no way I could subscribe to a podcast that I explicitly choose to subscribe to in an application designed for subscribing to podcasts.

They don't stop trying, everyone is trying to hoover up all data, all the time.

Google has implemented this asshole design/nagware in many products to push unnecessary to me and invasive data collection or functionality I want won’t be available.

For example, their maps app on iOS won’t save locations for me unless I sign in an enable web history tracking. I get prompted every time I try to save a pin as well as every once in a while I’m case I change my mind.

It’s a free app and it’s Google’s prerogative to try to get value out of it. But it’s annoying to me that they purposely don’t implement client tech (eg, save to app cache, device cookie not tied to individual) that would make their app better for me. And that they nag with no way to turn off forever. Their app already shows ads and makes money for them, they just want more money from the data stream.

I also worry about less savvy customers who don’t understand the prompt and unwittingly opt in to data collection that exists forever. The Facebook privacy explosion of last year is an example of users who accepted terms, but didn’t understand them, and got upset when data was used in ways that upset them.

I think Google Maps not saving your history as you described is an incredibly bad, frustrating experience.

FFS, my phone has gigs of RAM, why can’t Google Maps remember the address I searched for ten minutes ago? One minute ago? This is 2019. It has been this bad for a decade plus. Embarrassing IMO and demonstrates true UX myopia and true UX incompetence.

Personally I switched to Apple Maps after the iOS 13 release and haven't looked back. Because it's integrated into the OS, Apple Maps can look into your messages and auto-complete addresses from that. It can also save places without you signing into an account.

The only thing I miss is google's "offline" mode. I live in Michigan, and I frequently go on trips up north into heavily wooded areas. I don't always get cell service, so being able to save map data locally is a huge benefit. I can still search for nearby gas stations or stores even if I do not have cell service.

From what I tried, there's no way to save data in Apple Maps - it assumes the device is always connected to the internet.

HERE WeGo has an offline version. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city-navigation/id95...

I would pay Apple a monthly fee to get Apple Maps on Android.

I also nuked google maps from my iPhone after iOS 13.

I share your frustration.

Normally I'd say "never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence," but I really do think Google could fix this if they wanted to.

It still sucks because they don't want to fix it. Google makes their money off of people giving up info for ad targeting, and a user who only contributes one or two manually saved locations probably costs them more than they stand to gain.

Occam's razor also needs to be applied. If the explanation involving malice is the simpler option that makes fewer assumptions, then it is more likely.

I bet this has been discussed internally, but nobody cares because they don’t care about UX enough. They don’t understand the impact. The internal organization is fractured into fiefdoms defending internal services (e.g. deployment, AMP) and defending layers (e.g. SRE department), with nobody left responsible for the complete, vertically integrated user experience.

To me, this is a simpler explanation than malice.

I started using openstreetmap 3 years ago now and I hadn't had to use Google maps since. unfortunately not everyone else might have the same luck. it really depends on whether there are mappers in your area or have been in the past.

only way to know would be to download osmAnd and find out. it's a good all rounder app. for navigation i tend to use maps.me

Back in the Lollipop, maybe even KitKat days the maps app would save searches locally without web & app activity on similar to how the current gmail app keeps the last few searches locally even when you have web & app activity turned off in your profile.

Similarly, I wish Google.com wouldn’t prompt me about how awesome chrome is every time I visit and not logged in. At least with this, I can just keep a chrome instance for only google products. So I stayed logged in, but it’s not of my real web usage.

That kind of user-hostile bullshit is why I avoid anything and everything associated with Google. Still use search, but trying to break that habit.

I gotta be that guy and recommend DuckDuckGo. No, it's not always as good as Google search, but it's still usually good enough and when you -really- need Google you can simply add "g!". Every other time, you can rest assured your searches aren't feeding some AI.

DDG is at least a reasonable way to ween yourself off Google search rather than needing to go full cold turkey.

As I always do when this is suggested, I recommend using “!s” for Startpage instead of “!g” for Google.

Similar to DDG, Startpage provides results in a privacy respecting way, but it uses Google instead of Bing (and Oath), which DDG uses. There’s a common misconception amongst some that using !g on DDG is private, but it’s just a redirect, so Google can gather information from that search. Using !s as the fallback instead will keep your searches private.

I don't understand the business model of Startpage. They pay Google for using their search engine. Their revenue comes from non-personalised advertising.

So that means either Startpage has higher ad margins than Google or Google is selling services to Startpage below their own search margins or Startpage has some other source of funds to subsidise the search engine.

They do have a freemium mail offering

https://www.startmail.com/en/

I have no idea how much revenue this may bring in but it can't be much since I don't think I've ever seen it recommended in an Ask HN thread.

> or Google is selling services to Startpage below their own search margins

I expect this is the case - it's still better for Google to capture a user at lower margins via Startpage than to lose them to Bing.

Awesome, I didn't actually know about that option. Will try that now instead.

I do find the mention of DDG using Oath rather alarming, though, since Oath seems particularly obnoxious, at least with their GDPR pop-up on Tumblr. What does DDG do with Oath?

Let me correct myself: Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing. However, that's still not right. It's now Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing, not Oath.

DDG was originally using Yahoo and Bing. Yahoo was thrown under the Oath umbrella along with AOL, Tumblr, Engadget, etc. when they were acquired by Verizon. I assume for transparency, DDG stated they use "Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing" on their Sources help page to indicate who they're actually making the deal with.[0] However, I guess Verizon has changed the Oath name to Verizon Media, so now it's "Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing".

But, to answer your question. It's just a long winded way of saying Yahoo.

[0]: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

I moved to DuckDuckGo and I'm not going to lie, I hate it. I've been using it almost exclusively for a few months now and what it has definitely done is lower my impulse to search for things. Perhaps that is what you are after, in which case definitely try it.

If you use duckduckgo, in the situations in which you think the results are inadequate you can fall back on google by appending !g to the end of your search.

What about youtube app asking every time to suscribe to youtube premium? I say no, then after a while I'm asked again.

Seriously, I already said no 100s of times, why keep asking?

What else can you use, though? DuckDuckGo tracks you too, they're just lying about it, which is imho worse. Don't have the links handy right now, but it should be searchable. Alternatively, don't trust me.

They’ve done the same to AdWords and Adsense. I have messages that have been showing for years now and won’t go away.

Have yo tried maps.me on IOS?

I can't speak for their privacy practices, but it has the bifg advantage of letting you download maps to use them off-line.

Maps.me is my go to app when traveling in a foreign country where I may not have cell service. At home, in my car, I often need traffic info more than I need to know how to reach my destination. Is there a privacy respecting app that can deliver that?

The weirdest thing to me is that the data is still there and is still accessible. Google Maps won't remember my "Home" and "Work" locations, but when the device is in airplane mode, it will show the GPS coordinates of both (although they were "forgotten" several devices ago, and this phone has no way of knowing about them)

I use separate accounts for Google Maps vs Web Search.

> I wanted to try the google podcasts but it was a brick because I had disabled "youtube & web activity"

This is the worst. I have all the privacy settings turned up. In Google Maps on my phone, when I try to set my "Home" location, it tells me I need to turn on "Web and App Activity". What? Why? How are these two things related? Why do you have to track what apps I use and upload this info to Google in order to remember where my house is?

It's a bit like a psycho ex; "You want to have my phone number in your phone even though we broke up? Ok, but that means I get to install this camera in your bedroom."

The worst part is, it's all lies. If I open up Android Auto it says "12 mins to Home", so maps in Android Auto still knows where "Home" is, even though the Google Maps app claims it can't set home anymore.

I had an app that refused to work unless high accuracy location was turned on. There was a location aspect to it but demanding the highest setting of location sharing was vastly overreaching and I just uninstalled the app.

Out of curiosity how did you know the precision of location the app was asking for? If I recall correctly android gives the same permission prompt for fine and course location.

You get asked it you would like to "Improve location accuracy", just after giving location permissions.

http://i.imgur.com/KTkrQvN.png

> Why do you have to track what apps I use and upload this info to Google in order to remember where my house is?

It's not a real requirement at all. I have "Home" and "Work" remembered from before it was a "requirement". They pop up as quick nav actions when holding the Google Maps homescreen icon on my phone, or when opening a GMaps Driving icon.

But I'm not allowed to set the "Home" and "Work" locations in the actual app, so they don't work via text or voice search.

Not all big tech are at it.

The reason you hear a global sigh that “my battery life is terrible!” at every major iOS release, is the photo face to people clustering is done entirely on-device, and which photos are in the cluster is not shared across devices through iCloud.

There are several such features where Apple has made life difficult for themselves and the UX a little less seamless for users, in service of not giving themselves all the data.

Depending how the politics of privacy go, we could find an aggregation of personal data is not an asset, but a liability.

In such an environment, avoiding “hoovering up all data” is both a marketing point, and a reduction of risk exposure.

Is Apple the only big tech that’s using AI on device in a privacy protecting way?

I appreciate their approach to user functionality that doesn’t dump all my data into a near infinite number of collectors.

I also think it’s a neat way of distributed computing to use the cpus of all these phones sleeping at night to crunch stuff is actually cheaper than cloud. I think because the phones are sunk cost that is idle a few hours a day.

I miss the BOINC/Folding/SETI at Home clients that used to run as my screensaver and try to do good.

I think Google is trying to do this with the new update to Assistant - the language model is only 500mb so it can all be processed on the local device. I saw in a blog post somewhere they are trying to get to where individual devices hold data and compile these aggregated profiles on the device, the send the profiles to google for their ad services and other big data stuff

I use Google Translate and that works well with offline datasets to do CV and translation without any network or cloud usage.

I don’t think the photo app or assistant app allows this functionality although they likely could.

Believe it or not, Google is the leader in the space of privacy-centric AI - see Federated Learning.

I don't buy the fact that "Ferderated Learning" is privacy centric so much as it is liability and/or privacy-marketing centric. I feel that in the long run we will discover that using "ML" as a black box to smuggle user data off device won't hold up to scrutiny.

I find that hard to believe as Google’s definition of privacy is not mine. I believe Google could be awesome if they wanted, but it’s in conflict with their business mode.

I'm not an iOS user. Is there a reason the clustering can't be done while charging? Does it simply take longer than a charge cycle if a person has thousands of photos?

I didn't even realize google had a podcast app. I just installed it and you're right, I can't subscribe to a podcast since I have disabled web activity history. That's a particularly egregious dark pattern.

I wonder why does Google need the web activity to be turned on for subscribing to the Podcasts? Is there any realistic reasoning for it?

I bet they run targeted advertising in the podcast based on each listener’s web activity. Now I’m dreading the day YouTube makes the switch and doesn’t let you watch any monetized videos unless you consent to being tracked.

I think this is the part hidden from view when companies claim they let users opt out of data collection. Yes you can opt out, but some (possibly unrelated) features won’t be available to you.

Yes, but I think when they disable that feature, they must provide some justification that is believable right? I can't think of any for this.

"if we can't profit from you, you can't use our services" seems like a fairly reasonable justification from a business' perspective

I know podcasts are generally advertised via an RSS feed on a webpage, but that should be collected by e.g. Google (or Spotify, Apple), not directly by a device.

Bait. That's today's reality.

Up until recently I couldn't actually do much with google maps on my phone because I have restricted it from using microphone. An error would pop up on every simple address lookup

I don't think your issue was related to microphone permission. I have never allowed the microphone permission to Google Maps and haven't faced any such issues.

Disc: Googler.

The GP may also have had microphone and other permissions disabled for Google Play Services which can get cranky with fewer than full permissions.

> They said that by consenting I was asserting I had the consent of anyone who appeared in any of my photos

Does it let you specifically choose which photos to analyze, or does it scan your whole library?

If it's the former, facial recognition doesn't sound very useful if I have to go through each of my photos and figure out who's in them beforehand.

And if it's the latter, tracking down the strangers in the background of my 2006 vacation photos sounds time-consuming.

Side question, are you British? I'm asking because I've just read "hoover up" for the second time in my life and both were in the past week and although I understand the meaning of the phrase and I can guess why it came about, I'm trying to understand where it came from geographically.

That's in my vernacular, but I blame my Proudly British Grandpa.

I don't have any of these issues, but it's because I use my phone solely for making phone calls and GPS. I'm also on IOS, which may have something to do with it.

Aaaand that's why I never uploaded any photo with recognizable individuals (except people performing publicly) to Google Photos...

I'm sorry to break this to you, but I think all photos taken on Android are automatically uploaded to Google Photos regardless

Only if you have Google Photos installed and have configured it up to backup your photos and videos.

Which I obviously didn't do. I only upload manually selected photos to Google Photos, albeit very rarely.

Google assistant requires a fair amount of data collection turned on to function as well.

GDPR enforcement for this stuff will hopefully happen soon. As far as I can tell this stuff is illegal in the EU.

In case you are in the EU, this is a pretty clear case of a GDPR violation [1], you might want to raise this with you data protection agency. (They might have no resources to assists you though)

[1] https://gdpr.eu/gdpr-consent-requirements/, https://gdpr.eu/Recital-42-Burden-of-proof-and-requirements-...

It's the wild west -- corporations are just doing what they want while governments are asleep at the wheel.

Also, having an army of lawyers is exactly what allows for this -- you need to know which areas are gray in order to exploit them without risk of retribution/regulation. A basic minutes-long conversation would have likely arrived at the point of how recording of the owner themselves/third parties would affect the product.

>corporations are just doing what they want while governments are asleep at the wheel.

That assumes the governments aren't in on it. They probably want the data more than the corporations.

I mean, you know, "security" and all.

The government itself doing the things these corporation do would generate loads of outrage. For whatever reason it's a lot more acceptable for a company to collect all this data so you can play music with your voice and then the government can secretly collect it all later if they wish.

Are you not aware of the Ed Snowden revelations? I mean the NSA is piped into all these corporate data streams.

I'm very aware. That's kind of my point.

I'm sure selling data to the NSA, federal, state and local governments is very lucrative to these companies and is a primary revenue stream.

Unlikely, in my opinion. More likely the government can come along with national security letters or other means we might not even be aware of and just take what they need.

On the other hand some companies have been shown to be very willing to sell data to any buyer, not just the government. Phone carriers come to mind.

A primary revenue stream? For a public company, which has to publish its financials yet somehow keep this hidden? This sounds far fetched, to be honest.

The point is, that a corporation takes data only from their customers who consent to it (if they would read it).

The government would spie on potentielly everybody (and they do btw.)

Not really true.

FB for instance stores tagged image data of non-FB-users.

>That assumes the governments aren't in on it.

My theory is the opposite.

Career politicians have a lot to lose from universal data collection. They are already running into issues caused by 5-year-old tweets; imagine if their whole digital history was leaked? This is the one silver lining regarding legislation prospects.

The government should regulate whether devices alert themselves to new guests in the house?

> stakeholders that might be in proximity

I didn't realise visiting a friends house made me a stakeholder in all of their technology choices.

Or they might not even be friends. Walk down a street filled with Ring doorbells. You are being surveilled by strangers who have been fear mongered because a pedophile will steal their Amazon delivery.

A small Austrian retail shop got a $4k fine from GDPR because their surveillance camera pointed too broadly at a sidewalk. It'd be funny seeing regulators try to apply such restrictions on consumers.

It does. If their light switch doesn't work when I press it I'm annoyed. The fact that I care makes me as stakeholder.

It's just that traditionally my opinion didn't matter much and my stake was tiny.

How about in their car? Or on their land? Or anywhere that you rely on others to provide for your safety at all?

He immediately admitted that he warns guests in his own home about being recorded, and the article discusses the fact that the cameras have an LED light that turns on when recording. So it's clearly not true that he hadn't thought of this before.

It is a scripted response tailored to convey a specific, albeit less than truthful, narrative Much like the Juul CEO telling the public not to use their product right before the next announcement they were under investigation. Hopefully, a similar investigation will be announced presently.

Edited.intentiin > narrative

> Hopefully, a similar investigation will be announced presently.

This will never happen.

Corporate Robots are programmed with 2 rules - Everything has to be scaled up & It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Then they are let loose on the world where they fuck up, junked and a new model with the same programming is wheeled in.

Can they be reprogrammed is the question.

They don’t care. They’re arguing in bad faith. It’s also called lying or being full of shit.

You're wrong. They are not arguing in bad faith, because they are not arguing with you at all.

They are informing you of what their products do, and what the products should likely do in the future.

Debate, or argument, implies, at minimum, a two way discussion. That's not what's been going on. And I'm not sure that a debate ever will happen? The only politically palatable people even concerned about their loss of privacy are a few activists and people in the tech industry. (Can't really count on the pedophiles and the terrorists to be of any help in gaining the support of the larger populace.)

Even worse, it's not even like the moms, grandmoms, grandpas, teenage girls, hell raising ex convict uncles, etc don't know that they lose their privacy to google, facebook, and youtube. They do know that they lose their privacy, and they just don't care anymore.

Actually, maybe they never did care? I don't even know?

It's sad.

Why should they care? Generally speaking, people want privacy when we fear that disclosure will cause us some harm. I'm aware that there is a spectrum of viewpoints on this issue, and that some people value privacy as an end itself. But I think for most people, if they do value privacy for its own sake at all, it can't be a very high priority. If it were, they wouldn't use Google, credit cards, or cell phones.

Google, Amazon, etc. have a pretty good track record of not using private data against users. Which makes sense, because it is generally more profitable to act as the user's agent. This is exactly how most people think of private data in the hands of these big tech companies.

There's still some data they'd rather these companies not have. Even if I trust my lawyer to act as my agent, I'd prefer they not have a video of me having sex with my wife. On the other hand, if they had access to an occasional snippet of conversation from an incorrect hotword activation, I wouldn't really care. I know, and my lawyer knows, that their economic interest is in maintaining my privacy. There's almost no value for them in disclosing my conversations, and they would lose my future business.

> The only politically palatable people even concerned about their loss of privacy are a few activists and people in the tech industry.

Slightly related, but the only protest marches held in my European country when biometric personal identification documents were announced were held by overtly religious people, the type of people that believe staff like the 666 number and the end of times being near. Even though I'm not religious at all I joined them in one of their protests, and by looking around me there weren't that many lookalike programmers/tech people attending. Quite the contrary, most of the tech people I personally know are all in when it comes to stuff like this, they look at me as a retrograde when I mention privacy-related issues.

If you are a privacy advocate, how could you work at google and sleep well?

Why sign up for that kind of pain?

To me- its more interesting that this exec is so clueless as to utter something so damning in such a cliched way. Gosh- was he really this earnestly naive? Or is it possible that this is sarcasm? How can you be a vp exposed to press and say something this unguarded or sarcastic IN FRONT OF PRESS?!? What is going on at Google that people like this are promoted/hired?

“Our customers should consider warning guests and family that they use our products” -a google exec

Its a baldfaced lie. In 2019, with all the concern about privacy in the world it is inconceivable that they haven't thought about it. The transition of tech power to the sociopath overlords is complete.

>Ask forgiveness not permission. That's all that matters to big tech, that's what brings in the $$$

It was not an admission, it was a poorly thought out conversational device. He would have done much better to say, "good question".

In the same interview, in the very next sentence of the article:

> Osterloh then acceded that warning houseguests about Nest devices' recording capabilities is proper etiquette, stating that he already does so.

Given that he already warns his guests, he absolutely 100% certainly has thought about "all stakeholders", in quite that way.

They are clearly at fault, but at this point customers need to be more cognizant of the fine print. I recently did a Google takeout of my data and found for most services they have no tracking on me after March, which is around the time I started actively hunting for options to turn off anything which reveals private information. Taking steps to learn how to reduce my online footprint also helped

> I recently did a Google takeout of my data and found for most services they have no tracking on me after March

You found that they have no tracking data that they're willing to disclose to you. We don't know if that translates into actually having no tracking data.

I guess the whole point of hiring an army of lawyers and advisors is that you don't have to do all the things by yourself.

Of course they know, they just need to cover their asses sue to the litigation risk.

They've thought about it but they won't say that outside of closed doors for plausible deniability.

C'mon, that a straight lie out there, plain and visible.

The other alternative is that he is utterly incompetent at his role, which I don't believe for a second. He is probably be incompetent in speaking with media though