Google's use of payment profiles is much more nefarious and exploitative. I recently moved from one country to another. There are a lot of apps that provide local services - like banking and public transport information. I wasn't able to install any of them. Why? My original profile is from the country of my previous residence, where I originally bought my phone. None of those apps should be geographically restricted in the first place - but they are, for some unexplained reason. I have found apps that are geographically restricted even without the knowledge of the developer.

So then, how do you prove that you are in a different country? Easy, right? There are multiple sources of information that can prove your location - GPS, mobile service provider information, IP geo-location, Wifi SSID databases... . But no - none of that is enough. You have to add a local payment method! And coincidentally none of the payment methods other than credit card information works - not even the one provided by mobile service provider. So, you are forced to register your credit card information to prove your location.

Now that your have proved your location and installed the essential apps you need, may be it's time to delete the credit card information. What if you accidentally subscribe to some service you didn't want? After all, you aren't subscribed to any service or bought anything with the newly entered card. So it should be easy to delete it, right? NO! You are not allowed to delete your only registered payment method! [1] Now it's open forever as a payment method for online services or Google pay.

Google's tactics here are sleazy, underhanded and manipulative. And what of the complaints they receive about it? See for yourself - discussion locked and disabled! I don't know at what point their behavior is declared illegal and anti-social.

[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/10797082?hl=en&...

Fuck google play and install lineageOS with microg. You can install any play store app without geo restrictions.

I would have preferred that. But many apps - especially banking apps don't work on custom ROMs due to android's SafetyNet.

It is a tradeoff, but you can login through browser (Firefox) from your mobile. Its a decent tradeoff for a regular usage.

Depends on wear you live, some banking websites are just straight up neglected, while they focus on app development, strange world.

How about fully leaving Google ecosystem and switching to a GNU/Linux phone, Librem 5 or Pinephone.

Interesting about the non delete.

In Canada at least, through Visa and Mastercard, your expiry date is automatically updated with various people.

This means that never expire, may be just that.

https://www.bngpayments.net/automatically-update-expired-car...

You could get a prepaid card and switch to that as your primary payment method. FWIW, I've removed all payment methods from my account before and it worked though I had to disable some unused Google Cloud projects I think.

> You could get a prepaid card and switch to that as your primary payment method.

Just imagine that! The lengths you have to go to avail public services and protect your personal information from a giant corporation!

> they create a payments profile for you without consent.

And? I create a "profile" in my mind of every new human I interact with, and every human I read about or hear about even without interacting with. It's a basic human function.

When I gain a new business client, I create a profile of them too. This might start with a phone number, but over time, expand to include an email address, knowledge about their location, work hours, bank of choice, etc. Most businesses do this and always have.

Consent isn't required for this.

It is with a business in Europe, and rightly so.

Corporations may be legally people, but they are not individuals. They are not human. And we should not treat them as such.

Storing my credit card details permanently should require separate consent. Even if a credit card is used to verify my age, once they've seen it one time, they should delete it unless I tell them to store it - it's not like I'm going to get younger or anything.

They do also other things like that:

- logging to gmail on a non logged in android ? This logs the entire phone to the accounts

- chrome and online google services account are intertwined

Isn't that a pretty straightforward violation of the GDPR? Consent to track somebody's personal information requires the data subject to be informed as to the use of the information, and personal information may not be used outside of the usages that were consented to.

There's "the law", and there's "what big corporations will attempt to get away with anyway".

Because whatever happens in court (if it gets that far), they'll have years of appeals to go, and that'll be some future Google employee's problem not the current people.

And there is "the law" and "the other law", often times the two being incompatible, so you're kinda left in the middle trying to kinda please both sides.

Like when governments agencies ask to both "disable all tracking of what their employees do on the platform", to ensure private data and GDPR like stuff are ok. They also ask to specifically "enable full logging of all access to their data" for security reasons.

So: "sed -i 's/tracker/logger/g' codebase" and everyone is perfectly happy.

The consent Google requests could be very broad.

I wonder does GDPR specify different categories of consent which must be specifically and separately requested?

They did not ask for consent to set up a payments profile during age verification.

Though what you're describing would also be illegal. GDPR does not allow requesting consent for such broad data processing just to fulfill a legal requirement to verify the user's age, and then denying access to the service if the user understandably refuses to give consent.

Or, they’re using the only consumer-focused credit card verification system they have (google pay), and “prevent users from using their credit cards” was never on the roadmap…

Suppose I asked you if I could borrow your car to get groceries. A week later, I take your car again and go for a road trip. You would be justified in being mad at me, because (1) the consent didn't cover the use and (2) the initial consent was for a limited time.

Google has an obligation to verify age. Google also has an obligation to limit tracking of personal information to usages that have been consented to. Neither of these obligations negate the other, and if Google never put it onto their feature roadmap, that just means that Google has been negligent in fulfilling their obligations.