{"id":41468,"date":"2023-12-15T13:35:57","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T18:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=41468"},"modified":"2024-01-03T14:29:39","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T19:29:39","slug":"googles-confusing-new-location-data-settings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/15\/googles-confusing-new-location-data-settings\/","title":{"rendered":"Google&rsquo;s Confusing New Location Data Settings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2023\/12\/googles-confusing-new-location-settings-hide-data-in-two-different-places\/\">Ron Amadeo<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2023\/12\/googles-confusing-new-location-settings-hide-data-in-two-different-places\/\"><p>Google&rsquo;s misleading Location History descriptions in Google Maps have earned it several lawsuits in the US and worldwide. A quick count involves individual lawsuits <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2018\/08\/did-google-violate-users-privacy-when-it-secretly-kept-location-data\/\">in California<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/google-location-history-setting-confusing-settlement-1849619287\">Arizona<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmagazine.com\/news\/google-pays-39-9m-to-end-washingtons-location-tracking-privacy-lawsuit\">Washington<\/a>, a joint lawsuit in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/tech-news\/google-faces-lawsuits-location-tracking-practices-us-states-rcna13338\">Texas, Indiana, and the District of Columbia<\/a>, and another joint lawsuit across <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2022\/11\/google-settles-location-history-lawsuit-with-40-states-will-pay-392-million\/\">40 additional US states.<\/a> Internationally, Google has also been sued in <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2021\/04\/australia-rules-google-misled-android-users-about-location-history\/\">Australia<\/a> over its location settings.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Google&rsquo;s big new location data change is a new, duplicate data store that will live exclusively on your device. <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.google\/products\/maps\/updates-to-location-history-and-new-controls-coming-soon-to-maps\/\">Google&rsquo;s new blog post<\/a> says data for the long-running Google Maps Timeline feature will now &ldquo;be saved right on your device&mdash;giving you even more control over your data.&rdquo;<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Cloud-based Location History will still exist and still be collected. Instead of the additional security of encrypted on-device storage, this is less secure since your data will now be in two places, or maybe multiple places, if you have multiple devices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/14\/proton-drive-for-mac\/\">Proton Drive for Mac<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/11\/google-maps-in-late-2023\/\">Google Maps in Late 2023<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"googles-confusing-new-location-data-settings-update-2023-12-21\">Update (2023-12-21): <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2023\/12\/googles-confusing-new-location-settings-hide-data-in-two-different-places\/\">Ron Amadeo<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2023\/12\/googles-confusing-new-location-settings-hide-data-in-two-different-places\/\"><p>Google seems to be saying that Location History and Google Maps Timeline are always the same dataset and are never different. One is in the cloud, and one is going to be stored on your phone. It says that Google Maps timeline is &ldquo;a visualization of your Location History data,&rdquo; and that deletes in the Maps Timeline will delete data in Location History. The key thing this post got wrong is assuming that two location features&mdash;&ldquo;Maps Timeline&rdquo; and &ldquo;Location History&rdquo;&mdash;with different names and different controls in different locations, are different. Google says they are not.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>The other issue I didn&rsquo;t catch is that &ldquo;Maps Activity&rdquo; can be a pinpoint location, but it&rsquo;s not necessarily a visit to that location. Instead, it could be something like a search for that location, so it&rsquo;s not technically &ldquo;location&rdquo; data since it&rsquo;s not positional.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2023\/12\/18\/google-geofence-warrants\">John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2023\/12\/18\/google-geofence-warrants\">\n<p>The reason these overly broad geofence warrants &ldquo;almost always&rdquo; were specific to Google is that Apple never collected location data that could be collected in the aggregate like this.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=38660646\">Hacker News<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"googles-confusing-new-location-data-settings-update-2024-01-03\">Update (2024-01-03): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.schneier.com\/blog\/archives\/2023\/12\/google-stops-collecting-location-data-from-maps.html\">Bruce Schneier<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ron Amadeo: Google&rsquo;s misleading Location History descriptions in Google Maps have earned it several lawsuits in the US and worldwide. A quick count involves individual lawsuits in California, Arizona, Washington, a joint lawsuit in Texas, Indiana, and the District of Columbia, and another joint lawsuit across 40 additional US states. Internationally, Google has also been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2023-12-15T18:36:01Z","apple_news_api_id":"f9cfd4f5-d72c-4f17-9734-db4b7e545489","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-01-03T19:29:41Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A-c_U9dcsTxeXNNtLflRUiQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[245,432,31,2321,26,41,209,355],"class_list":["post-41468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-googlemaps","tag-gps","tag-ios","tag-ios-17","tag-iosapp","tag-lawsuit","tag-legal","tag-privacy"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41468"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41635,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41468\/revisions\/41635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}