Reply to post: Re: Oracle tipped off the world ...

Re: Oracle tipped off the world ...

Pissed off that Google is doing this? Think about AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobil, Sprint, EE ... they all do it.

That's completely different.. As part of the service they are delivering to you - they automatically must know where you are, in order for it to work. Which is all fine and dandy. It's in their terms of service smallprint somewhere, and it's unavoidable. Although obviously they could delete all records of your previous movements, except I think they're regulated by government and required to maintain that data for a certain period.

Google similarly do this with location services. They use your permission to turn that on as an excuse to havrvest all sorts of you personal data. Except they don't do this as a neccessary part of the service, but in order to increase their profit margins. And to be fair, to improve the service, though there are ways of doing that which would cost money that they get to avoid by harvesting your data. So if you use satnav, Google are able to add your speed of movement and location to their data - and do traffic mapping, withough paying for roadside sensor data. They also maintain their almost global map of WiFi hotspots by getting your phone to report where you've been and what hotspots it saw. Keeps their database up-to-date to improve satnav speed, almost for free. Also means they have data on exactly where you've been.

All of those services were on if you enabled location services. Which you couldn't use maps without, and there was no way of opting out of giving that free data to Google without accepting their terms. Maybe recent updates to Android have improved this? But I doubt it.

Still, even that is fine. If you care, you know what you're getting. You can avoid Droids, or turn location services off except when you need mapping - and it's all in the privacy smallprint somewhere.

This, on the other hand, isn't covered by the privacy policy or part of the workings of the service, and so is illegal, as it's in breach of data-protection laws.