Face it, Citizen.
You're pwned.
Until you hit the off button, that is...and remove the battery...and always use cash. No, we won't be suspicious of you if you do this...how silly.
Google has confirmed that its Play digital tat bazaar made a whole lot of unexpected attempts to locate users even after they opted-out of location services. But Google says the behaviour was a bug, not a feature. "Amanda", a Google Play community manager, posted the following in the forum that kicked off the furore: We …
The Canadian government position is, and has been for some time, that only criminals use cash. That is why they removed the $1000 bill from circulation and that is why depositing cash (even as little as a few thousand dollars) into a bank is consider suspicious, worthy of reporting, and opening a file on the cash user.
We're more pwned than we can imagine.
Canada was just following the lead of the US. They pulled bills larger than $100 out of circulation like 50 years ago, and for a long time have been requiring banks to alerts to deposits of over $10K in cash. Since a lot of people were getting around that by depositing just under $10K, they now report on smaller amounts. I don't think it is set in stone but reportedly closer to $5000 now.
More and more countries are imposing maximum limits to any cash purchases, e.g. the French limit is €1,000. It won't be long until the UK follows suit.
Who wants cash....the people.
Who doesn't want cash.....the government, the banks, the acquirers, the security services, PSPs, etc..
Hmm, except that it sounds like if location services is turned on then Play Services would log your position and pass it back to Google.
Google need to know where people are to i) do location aware adverts ii) make the traffic overlay on Google Maps work. A pernicious Catch 22 for Android users; if they all turn off location services then traffic data on Google maps is not going to be useful.
Once upon a time such perniciousness would be cause for government intervention and a forced company break up.
Other companies do it differently. BlackBerry teamed up with TomTom, who get their traffic data from a variety of sources. They've a deal with Vodafone to get aggregated location data derived from base station tracking of mobiles, some TomToms have a 3g modem in them so can report home, and I think they also use companies like Traffic Master. Just as acquisitive? Maybe, but then TomToms don't show ads to you whilst your driving or once you've got there. Anyway, TomTom's traffic data seems to be much more dynamic than Googles.
I'm slightly puzzled why Apple haven't bought TomTom. Apple's own mapping is slightly rubbish, TomTom have a lot of map data, an excellent and complete service and, these days, a pretty good range of hardware. Their maps aren't quite global (not Japan for example), but that could be fixed with some cash that Apple could throw in for the purpose.
I'm slightly puzzled why Apple haven't bought TomTom. Apple's own mapping is slightly rubbish,
Probably wouldn't do much good, since TomTom provide the basic mapping data for Apple devices already. Apple sprinkle over their magic fairy dust combine this with data from other sources, to make their maps richer, and therein lies the problem.
"Probably wouldn't do much good, since TomTom provide the basic mapping data for Apple devices already."
Aha, now that I didn't know. I thought they'd gone to Open Street map, and erroneously assumed that'd gone no further. I wonder, did they buy data from TomTom after moving to Open Street Map? There was a time when iPhones didn't know where whole towns in Australia were.
@bazza "Just as acquisitive? Maybe, but then TomToms don't show ads to you whilst your driving or once you've got there."
I would really like to see proof of this. I have never seen an ad when using Google Maps for navigation or at the end of the route. If you're just making stuff up then I'd ask, why? You only make your other points less valid.
I'd like someone to explain how a TomTom device that has a GPS receiver can display Ads?
One poster said that some TomToms have a 3g modem inside.
Simple question then
Who pays the 3G bill? I certainly don't and would never do so.
And
Why do I need to connect my TomTom to my PC in order to update the maps if it has 3g capabiity?
@steve,
not every single tomtom has a 3g modem inside. Only the models featuring HD-live or HD-traffic have such a modem. And you paid for the data connection when you bought the thing. The rest of the upkeep is paid for by TomTom (since it's 2 way traffic and TomTom benefits from it I don't see why they shouldn't. Its only limited amounts of data so i'd be surprised if most Nav units featuring this send more than maybe a few hundred MB in their lifetime). I believe some of the units featuring live traffic updates also required quite a hefty monthly extortion payment membership fee to use it.
imanidiot yes.
To get traffic reports I'd have to subscribe to a bundle of stuff I do not want, called "Live services" £50 a year for Europe. (Not just UK). Maybe useful if you're travelling around a lot. We're not. I'd happily pay £10, even £15.for just the UK traffic reports. But beyond that, year on year it's just not worth it to us, for the odd journey up the motorway.
Quote;
LIVE Services Europe
Real-time services in one bundle
Get there faster with TomTom Traffic
Drive with the latest speed camera locations
Know the weather ahead
Google also had a spokesperson point out to us that since Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) it has offered users "the ability to disable a specific application’s permission to obtain location, including Google Maps and Google Play."
Doesn't work for Google Play Services .... I get prompted as such
Attention - Google Play Services is a provider of location services for this device. Location access can be modified from location settings - Click ok / location services.
Clicking location services shows location requests by google play services.
So I click on Google Play Services and click permissions. Oh look ... Your Location is turned on.
So I click to turn of location services and get prompted.
Attention - Google Play Services is a provider of location services for this device. Location access can be modified from location settings - Click ok / location services.
Hang on ... Didn't I just do that ? Google is sending me round in a circle here.
So I call horseshit on their assertion you can disable a specific app permissions. Maybe works for non-Google apps but for their own app it's a fail.
Play is the store app.
Play Services is a support framework, one job it does is mediating access to location to prevent multiple clients hammering the underlying GPS & Wi-Fi hardware. It's meant to reduce battery use. You really want a warning about disabling it.
On Android they're both apps, someone thought they should both be in the app location permission list but took the trouble to add that warning and the confusing ok option. On my phone the location settings button takes me to location settings and happily let me disable them. Be more sensible to not list it with apps perhaps.
OK. I think you enlightened me and maybe a few others.
Google Play Store ≠ Google Play Services
I always wondered why the frickin store needed so much to work, and felt abused.
Now, that I realize they are two separate programs I can accept the abuse a lot easier.
IMO Google needs to change the name to just Google Services and people will give them a lot less crap.
And since I'm giving Google free tips. How about the option to select which permission is OK with you during the installation process, and not afterwards once the permission has already been obtained? It seems like "we'll look for the thief after he gets in and kick him out", instead of stopping him at the door.
Marshmallow is better than Lolipop, but it's still not good enough.
OK. I think you enlightened me and maybe a few others.
Google Play Store ≠ Google Play Services
I always wondered why the frickin store needed so much to work, and felt abused.
Now, that I realize they are two separate programs I can accept the abuse a lot easier.
IMO Google needs to change the name to just Google Services and people will give them a lot less crap.
And since I'm giving Google free tips. How about the option to select which permission is OK with you during the installation process, and not afterwards once the permission has already been obtained? It seems like "we'll look for the thief after he gets in and kick him out", instead of stopping him at the door.
Marshmallow is better than Lolipop, but it's still not good enough.
So I call horseshit on their assertion you can disable a specific app permissions. Maybe works for non-Google apps but for their own app it's a fail.
Given that the sole purpose of anything that Google does is to grab more data from people, preferably unnoticed, I would venture that is not a coincidence, nor surprising..
> Disabling it will likely break a lot of other apps.
Not that I've seen. I don't have it (it's not installed at all) and the phone works just fine, including location stuff.
For non-GPS location, I use one of the replacement frameworks available on F-Droid, which also have the advantage of being 100% off-line.
Having found that for the last 2 months, Play Store was chewing through my data in the background (without me doing anything, having all updates turned off, etc. it was still chewing between 10-100Mb per day!) I installed Netguard, had it block all attempts of Play Store and all the other Google apps to access the internet, my data usage has dropped massively. My phone is faster and all is happy with the world again... :P
I wished I'd known about programs like Netguard months ago, could have saved myself so many problems... And sorry if this sounds like an advertisement, its not! I'm not associated with Netguard in any way shape or form, just happy that it saved me so much and know blocks any attempt from Google to get access to my data! :)
"Shhh! Google will banish it as an inappropriate application if they get to hear of this..."
There's always F-droid: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=eu.faircode.netguard
At least I suspect as much since I've had a couple of Xperia phones start to really chew through the battery and labeling play services as the culprit every time (this was when using songs stamina mode which kills net and GPS when the screens off). They always came back saying they're aware but needed Google to fix it.
re. the Reg understands
methinks it's sceptic sarcasm, often used by newsspeak to mean: we've been told, but don't believe a word of it, or have strong doubts, at least. But can't say that openly, because we can't afford the best lawyers on the planet, as they already work for one well-known worldwide corp, nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I'm saying...
"Why is this bit worded in the same style as a lawyer answering a claim?"
I suppose they were both statements that Google made to the Register but el Reg couldn't, of course, verify them for themselves. Alternative wording might have been "Google told us..." but it's a reasonable way to say that.
I belive them! Like when they said it was a bug they slurped e-mail addresses and passwords while driving by to give us their wonderful FREE streetview. I believe them, because, like, they're a big corp, and those corpses never lie, do they. And they do no evil and stuff. How can you NOT believe them?!
p.s. I also believe the goverment, the banks, the lawyers, and ads. Especially ads. Those suspicious, questioning, unbelieving individuals are of a warped mind and should be eliminated from our sunlit yard.
They didn't slurp e-mail addresses and passwords, they slurped data which could contain anything - on an encrypted network it'd just be encrypted data, but on an OPEN network it would be plain text so literally anything that was transmitted by whatever device is using that network.
as I remember at that time, according to google's own investigation, it was a rogue engineer, who did that. Then, with VW emissions recently, it was a couple of rogue engineers. You start to wonder, how many rogue engineers in the MOD there are to bypass the usual "red button" sequence.
And don't start me on the rogue traders...
> according to google's own investigation, it was a rogue engineer, who did that. Then, with VW emissions recently, it was a couple of rogue engineers.
First as an employee, latter on as a consultant, and nowadays as a business owner, I always refused to do anything of questionable ethics or lawfulness. Mostly out of an utopian sense of idealism, but there was always also a part of me saying "Going under the bus for this lot? No, thank you".
> We identified a bug affecting a small number of users
Yeah, that's boilerplate. It just means they're not being honest.
Honest companies will tell you exactly how many users, give you a forensic on the problem, tell you exactly how it came to happen, and exactly how they fixed it. All that written or at least endorsed by someone from management.
I actually had this happen with one of my providers a few days ago. I trust them more now than before their fuck-up.
I've been suffering with this for a couple of months now. On the link in the article, Google notice it's affecting some Huawei phones, including the G7 (which I have), Every other time it started, the phone would display a "searching for GPS" message, however never locked to a GPS signal and drained the battery much faster than usual.
I understand people feel nervous about their movements being tracked, though the data collected by a community of Android users does have its uses:
I assumed that the real-time(ish) traffic delays that show up on Maps if you're navigating are gathered from this kind of data slurp? By able to tell where all their phones are, and how quickly they're moving (compared to how quickly they should be moving), they can determine where delays are.
I'm running CM 7 on an Incredible (removable battery w/cheap replacements available, and builds up to 4.4 on XDA for the intrepid). Made the mistake of installing GAPPS but never let them update. I think it's appalling that they can't be uninstalled without mayhem.
Play Services, on its own recog, updated sometime in the summer. I started getting failure notices about it. Ignoring them long enough, they went away on their own...hmmm.
Yesterday, just to be tiresome, I tried using Titanium to first install an older version (also self-updated without asking) and then delete the current one. No more errors.
Google are shooting themselves in the foot with me. Their crawlers/bots have no business in some of the directories they probe on my website, slowly the 66 ranges are getting blocked. For a while I blocked the whole range, and suddenly my site disappeared from search rankings.
"That's a really nice website you have there, shame if no one could find it."
Elect me and I'll install nice sturdy Puritan stocks in front of the White House. The 3 Google stooges will be the first booking.