Hacker News Reader

Comment by stubish | Hacker News Reader

The lawsuit alleges that location information is still recorded and stored by Google even if you have the Location History setting turned off, and that to actually stop Google collecting and storing your location information you need to turn off both Location History and Web & App Activity, and that users are not informed about this. It is not that turning of your map location history won't turn off your search history.

View on HN

Right, because the web activity itself can contain location information independent of the _explicit_ collection of location history.

It comes down to the granularity of privacy concerns and the complexity it introduces.

If you disable the direct collection of location history, should you, the user, be allowed to turn on the collection of other information that can contain location data? That would include all location-enabled service histories, of which search and app history is the most obvious example. Or should Google treat your setting as a prohibition against all possible sources of location data regardless of your other preferences?

The lawsuit alleges that, as it was presented to the user, it is reasonable to assume that turning off Location History would stop collection of location information entirely. If location information is still captured and fed to Google via other channels then the privacy settings need to make this obvious. So the user can give or deny consent. It isn't about what the application can do or should do, it is about getting informed consent for the implemented behavior.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com