Quote:Maybe you like these ideas. Maybe you feel like they’re a bridge too far and an invasion of privacy. But either way, the future that Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other companies envision is one in which your every motion, interest, and desire are tracked, combined, bought, sold, and turned into sales dollars.

So, yes. Google’s location APIs are tracking you unless you turn them off. In some cases, you may have to turn them off through Google Play rather than at the per-app level. But this is one small part of Google’s overall business strategy to create a closed-source net around Android’s open-source roots. The actual feature that probably caused the kerfuffle is itself part of a larger trend to gather details about every aspect of your life, the better to advertise and market it to companies willing to pay. Consider, after all, the value of having that McDonald’s app on your smartphone to McDonald’s (or any other company).

From automatic geotagging to facial recognition, the same companies that provide essential digital services build databases of your activities, travels, and life. Said data is then vacuumed up and sold through third parties with names like Acxiom with little oversight and less accountability.

(09-14-2016, 08:35 PM)SteelCrysis Wrote: http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/235594-yes-google-play-is-tracking-you-and-thats-just-the-tip-of-a-very-large-iceberg

Quote:Maybe you like these ideas. Maybe you feel like they’re a bridge too far and an invasion of privacy. But either way, the future that Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other companies envision is one in which your every motion, interest, and desire are tracked, combined, bought, sold, and turned into sales dollars.

So, yes. Google’s location APIs are tracking you unless you turn them off. In some cases, you may have to turn them off through Google Play rather than at the per-app level. But this is one small part of Google’s overall business strategy to create a closed-source net around Android’s open-source roots. The actual feature that probably caused the kerfuffle is itself part of a larger trend to gather details about every aspect of your life, the better to advertise and market it to companies willing to pay. Consider, after all, the value of having that McDonald’s app on your smartphone to McDonald’s (or any other company).

From automatic geotagging to facial recognition, the same companies that provide essential digital services build databases of your activities, travels, and life. Said data is then vacuumed up and sold through third parties with names like Acxiom with little oversight and less accountability.