Recall is sometimes fuzzy with age, but it works well enough, and I don't have to worry about external queries violating my various rights nearly as much as with tech companies.
At this point, I think every piece of modern consumer electronics ought to be considered hostile until proven benign. I've worked with enough of them over the years, on different ends, to no longer trust any of them.
I'm also old enough to remember the before-times - when there wasn't the technology to track us everywhere, or, when we did have something breadcrumbing, it wasn't being automatically uploaded to whoever, wherever, etc.
My first question, though, would be "Why?" What value do you get out of tracking your location with any great detail that self hosting it would be of much value? However, various cheap GPS loggers and Google Earth import probably would do a lot of what you're looking for.
I don't understand the point you're making (unless you're being snarky.) You recognize that most other users of Google Location History can do the same?
> My first question, though, would be "Why?" What value do you get out of tracking your location with any great detail that self hosting it would be of much value?
Another way of framing is what utility Location History can provide to users. Some use cases are casual ("Where did I go exactly on this trip two years ago?", "Where did I eat when I was in X city 9 months ago?", etc) while other people have personal uses for it: https://towardsdatascience.com/analyzing-my-google-location-...
> However, various cheap GPS loggers and Google Earth import probably would do a lot of what you're looking for.
That would probably work, as well perhaps another OSM-based mapping application. I don't know the value of all that extra metadata which is computed though (as highlighted in the above article).
I am. I'm referring to my brain in a "tech industry buzzword" way. It is, technically speaking, a trained neural network. Just a biological one, not a silicon/code based one. I happen to like it, and it can also do things like tell the difference between a low moon in the sky through a smoke haze and a traffic light.
> Another way of framing is what utility Location History can provide to users.
"If there are any positives, then the technology is worth using!" style thinking misses, entirely, the concept of opportunity cost, and the various downsides.
I won't argue that it's not pretty cool to see everywhere you've been - but it's also an exceedingly detailed record of who you are, and anyone who claims it can be suitably anonymized is full of crap (see the Grindr Bishop for a solid case study here).
Where I really start to get upset, though, is that there's no opt-in for this, other than some vague, generic, "nobody reads this and it doesn't say anything anyone would understand anyway" clickthroughs.
Android doesn't have a, "Would you like us to keep a record of your location and everywhere you've been? You can review it later and see what cool places you've been!" sort of opt-in. It just does it.
Google clearly is getting some value from that data, and it's not at all clear what it is.
I view it similarly as others looking at methods to self-host their photo backup with timeline indexing and searching, etc.
https://petewarden.github.io/iPhoneTracker/
"the advantages of Location History"
I thought that this data would be useful to help geotag the photos in my iPhoto library. So I wrote a little script to parse the iPhone data, and cross-match the timestamps with photos. Never became really popular though, probably because people now use phones to take photos and they already include the location in the EXIF data.
iPhone Geotag
https://peterburk.github.io/programs/#iPhoneGeotag
"keeping that data to themselves"
Once the bug was fixed, and Apple stopped storing location data indefinitely, I thought it would be kind of handy as a feature. So I wrote a little PHP script that ran on my jailbroken iPhone and saved a log of my location every 30 minutes.
It recorded data from Monday, May 12, 2014 3:44:52 PM to Wednesday, April 8, 2015 9:00:06 AM
My battery life got worse, because the GPS kept turning on. During that whole year, I never wanted to check the data, not even once. So I turned off the script. Not tracking myself made me less self-conscious about where I was walking and what I was doing, and it was a relief.
I do use an iPhone, but it's an old 4S with iOS 6.1.3, and I only switch on 3G rarely in case of emergencies. I don't use iCloud for backup, only USB sync. The phone companies will know my location, but Apple probably don't. With the security features all compromised through jailbreaking, I can see everything on my phone so I know what data they could possibly get. And that's good enough for me.
For me the most uncomfortable thing I ever did was itemise how much money I had spent at different outlets. I discovered that I'd spent an incredible amount of money scuba diving over a 12 month period. Not something that I wanted to share with my partner.
Like you, I started logging my expenses too! And I still do that. I'm using some scripts on my phone, with one icon on the homescreen for each kind of expense, logging to a TSV.
It has made me more self-conscious about spending money, but that's probably a good thing! Pressuring me to give more money to beggars and spend less on bubble tea.
[1] UncleBob applied "clean as you go" to code, too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaAMQVq01E&t=2021s
Even my partner's cat will stop eating its meal if I stare at it whilst it's eating (yes, it's a bit neurotic). (But unlike Google, Facebook, the Government etc. I'm immediately in trouble for teasing the cat.)
If you're trying to make a point to someone about how much of a problem data collection, use, abuse, etc, is - link them to the place they can view their own history. It's even more fun if you're with them and can watch the expression of utter horror form as they realize just what, exactly, literally everywhere they've been can tell someone else about them. "Hey, isn't that the kink club out there?"
Even on my phone when I search for "tires in <city>" it assumes I mean a city in the east coast of the US. Maps/Waze are only marginally better, showing me results 170+ miles from my current location, generally.
I use trackmenot and ad nauseam plugins on my main computer, so my ads are always 100% irrelevant - if I see them at all. Ad nauseam clicks every ad it sees, and stores the banner. It tries to track how many dollars of ad spend its wasted on your behalf, too. I'm somewhere north of $17k at this point lifetime clicks.
I know I'm not winning this fight but I can make it more hilarious for me in the meantime.
[0] google routinely can't, and i stopped using search because it made me do photo captchas every time. If google can't, i'm guessing other people are going to have less luck.
All geolocation based on GSM cells and wifi sends your location continuously.
If your threat level is NSA/nation state then this isn't good enough since they probably could get a copy before Google deletes it but it is probably enough to be useless for low level LE.
Did you realize that the world is a step away from total Panopticon (https://shorturl.at/mCJK2).
The "digital natives" don't care at all. The "millenials" are just ignorant. The "X-ers" are fighting to stay relevant and "young". The "boomers" are screaming from the trenches, but the echo is responding with the usual "OK. Boomer".
It is over. This is the Great Reset, created by Davos Elites and embraced by Corporations, Governments and "modern" people of the world.
This is the direct result of corrupted societies which abandoned classical education and liberal arts long time ago.
If I switch OwnTracks to "move mode", it's great, but then it drains battery like crazy. "Significant changes mode" doesn't really cut it to map out my track as I move around during the day. And it's especially annoying because I do have it set up to trigger some lights to turn on in my house when I get within 500 feet of home. Sometimes it'll finally trigger an hour or two after I get home, which isn't particularly useful. I've exempted the app from Android's "battery optimization" thing, and I'm using a Pixel 4, which shouldn't have any shenanigans like killing background apps frequently like some other manufacturers do.
Out of self-interest, where would one check to (eventually) find this write-up? Sounds like OP hadn't known just how long OT takes to update on Android, which makes me assume other information out there may be out of date, or someone else's best case scenario (as opposed to real-world usage).
The only trouble Iǘe had is that the Android app sometimes crashes and I have to manually launch it again. There are other compatible apps that I haven tried, though.
Creating expectations around accepting surveillance is not healthy.
[0] https://canadagps.ca/collections/gps-data-logger/products/co...
I also like to look for places I've been in the past and Google maps can tell me the dates I've been to a specific place in the past.
So it does provide quite a lot of value at least for me. I completely understand the sentiment that seems to be a majority on hacker news how that's quite a bad idea, how I'm giving away my privacy for convenience and yada yada. But I made the personal decision that Yes it's worth exposing this data to Google and possibly law enforcement that require Google to disclose this information for the convenience I get in return.
I don't leave obvious digital traces and I think people wanting to know this info can find different hobbies and better jobs.
It could also connect to a URL of your specification to upload real-time updates.
Keep in mind that if you're not concerned about immediate tracking you can log locally then use any of many options (e.g. FolderSync) to do scheduled uploads of a log file.
I can export my data and then use that how I want.
Or you save to Gpx files and see history with any Gpx File Viewer
The "protocol" consists of a single HTTP request and response, so you can easily write your own server software to store the data however you want, which is what I did.
If you don't want to write your own backend, you can also just use the server software[1] the author of the app uses, which is also open source.
[0]: https://github.com/aaronpk/Overland-iOS [1]: https://github.com/aaronpk/Compass
EDIT: I use it to do home automation actions depending on where I am. I.e. when I leave, it automatically arms the alarm and turns off the lights.
You can configure a custom https endpoint and then your devices will ping the endpoint when there's significant movement.
Same thing could be said about IOS with the additional constraint that the vendor can do whatever it wants and we don't know what it's actually doing.
If you care about privacy just don't carry a phone.
I feel like this position is unrealistic. Privacy is possible with a modern smartphone. Using an alternative OS on Android devices can help facilitate this. I've been using GrapheneOS as a daily driver for nearly six months now. Any issues I've run into have largely been due to my own configuration of the device.
You can also get a lot of useful information from Michael Bazzell's books or podcasts. It may involve jumping through hoops but it is possible to go "off grid" in many regards.
If your threat model includes your cell provider, then yes, a faraday bag may be worth looking into. There are also open alternatives like the Librem 5 or PinePhone that offer hardware kill switches. These types of cases are rare, but one doesn't need to become a complete technophobe.
As it stands, true privacy is relegated to the technologically elite, the truly paranoid, or those that can pay to play. I would love for that to change, but unfortunately that's the current state of affairs.
Or the broke who can't afford the devices now more and more used against us.
Or those who are willing to forgo the conveniences of such devices in exchange for privacy. Or, simply for the sanity of not having to deal with them.
I'm firmly in the boat of "Could do any or all of those things" - I considered a PinePhone, have a PineBook Pro, could easily do GrapheneOS, and... I'm currently using none of them. I'm using an AT&T Flip IV that I leave at home regularly. If I have some fancy requirement, I can tether a laptop to it.
You start from the assumption that a smartphone of some variety or another is a requirement - and I'll counter that, while it's certainly the default option of modern life, the smartphone is really only a decade old, and there are ways of doing things without it we can go back to - and those things do generally still work.
I'm at a point in my life where both I can be a bit annoying about things like reachability, and, interestingly, I'm hostile enough to tech that people expect me to be a bit weird about things. Nobody was surprised when I showed up with a flip phone - but they were surprised that I still had things like email and Google Maps capability on it (KaiOS). At which point, the gears started turning.
Trying to find a way to de-evil what is looking more and more like a corrupted, user-hostile system through and through doesn't seem worth the time, when one can work towards not requiring people to be in that system in the first place.
Remember, when Steve Jobs' biographer asked him what his kids thought about the iPad, his response was, "They haven't used it." You're more likely to find the "cellphone free" group among high level tech execs and such.
Why is that? It's worth pondering.
I know more and more people, deeply in tech professionally, who are opting out of it in their personal life, across the board. They know what it can do, they've seen it, may have worked on older versions of it, and simply want no part of it anymore.
In a former life when internal company email was becoming a thing, there were execs at my computer company that made one of these minicomputer-based office productivity systems who had their admins print out their email, they'd write responses by hand, and have the admin send the response.
This is true, kind of like how most drug dealers don't do drugs themselves.
Carrying a phone at all times is more a matter of social pressure than anything else. If you get into a real emergency situation, you can just ask someone if you can make a call from their phone -- after all, the world is full of people walking around with phones in their pocket.
Leaving your phone at home most of the time is a little inconvenient, but it's certainly not unrealistic. It's just that most of people are happy to trade privacy for convenience.
I'm not sure it's unrealistic but the tradeoffs for ditching a phone entirely day-in day-out wouldn't work for most people.
As you say there are alternatives for smartphones and one could presumably alternatively carry a feature phone that can't be easily tied to their identity. (Although there's an increasing assumption that you have a smartphone to accomplish various tasks.)
Indeed, because... basically everyone carries one.
So, in order to counter that, more people need to not carry one. Not just object to using smartphones, but, "Look, I literally don't own one, I know you want me to install thus and such app to complete some survey before entering the building, but I can't. What's the alternative?"
The phone I do use I bricked for all activity save voice and text: it sits on my kitchen table and there it stays. The upshot is that my phones are inexpensive, <$100. In fact, I just purchased a new one and am pleasantly surprised at the voice quality of 4G LTE.
Certainly most people with jobs cannot afford to be out of touch and I understand it is a luxury to be un-tethered. However, my position in fed security and CI drove home the point: If you are connected with a cell phone, you're going to get pwned. The level of pwnage is directly proportional to your status and employer.
IMO it's a bit nihilistic compared to pushing for privacy guards for infrastructure.
Has anyone ever been exonerated based on their Google location history?
It's not great.
If they really want, they can see the distance from the tower because that's a requirement for the communications protocol to work (LTE at least expects to account for lightspeed delay in allocating transmission slots) and gets measured during the communications, so the operator should be able to see that distance to the granularity of something like 100m (or is it less nowadays?); but AFAIK that's usually not stored unless you're in a 911 call or perhaps with some tracing warrant.
”To correctly form a beam, the transmitter needs to understand the characteristics of the channel. This process is called channel sounding or channel estimation. A known signal is sent to the mobile device that enables it to build a picture of the channel environment. The mobile device sends back the channel characteristics to the transmitter. The transmitter can then apply the correct phase and amplitude adjustments to form a beam directed at the mobile device. This is called a closed-loop MIMO system.”
This is also speculation on my part but I'd suspect they're targeting specific clusters of devices in an area and using multiplexing than having dozens of radios on one tower.
I feel like Google's location history is basically built for that kind of thing.
0: https://www.marketingdive.com/ex/mobilemarketer/cms/news/res...
1: https://www.deingenieur.nl/artikel/after-13-years-galileo-sa...