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It’s fair to assume that every single interaction you have with any major website is logged and stored, and disabling any “history” features etc is only for yourself, eg if you’re on a shared computer.

There’s absolutely no way any of the FAANGs would let you use their service without harvesting your data. It’s their reason for existing and any other “features” (like search, maps, video) is just the carrot to get you there.

This is both the best organic example of FUD I've seen since Slashdot articles on Microsoft during the Windows/Linux battles 20 years ago, and an excellent example of the black hole nihilism of 2010s HN on data - free, fantastic tools used by billions are reduced to a "carrot" for "data harvesting"

Why a multi-billion tech conglomerate should code "free, fantastic tools used by billions", if it's not going to get anything from it?

We openly trained/training image detection algorithms with re-captcha for example.

So why do they offer these services for free? Altruism?

Most sites do track forever.

That said google at least and I think Microsoft anonymizes a bit after I think 18 months or so, and does the last bits of an IP address before anything is written to disk on the google analytics side.

Google deletes old data after 18 months for new users: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/google-colle...

For users who signed up before that point you choose how long to keep it for.

Or at least claims to do so. No reason not to trust them about it, right?

"Delete data" aka keeping all of the records around but changing the `is_Deleted?` column to True.

GPDR penalties make this kind of misleading information pretty expensive, even for Google.

Why would they do that when commercial intent is available from current behaviour so easily.

It may be accurate but its not fair to assume and could be illegal (especially in the EU)

If they don't want you to use services then they should explicitly disable them without tracking

You just have to anonymize at various levels after some time . You can keep the data forever if you wish (with anonymization of course).

I agree with your conclusion that turning off location history will not protect you from inclusion in these warrants.

Another quote from the article: > In 2018, the Associated Press reported that Google could still collect users’ locations even when their location history is “paused.”

If you have web and app activity off this is probably not true and the AP is lying.

If you turn off location services on device, also probably not true and the AP is lying.

If you run location services set to ON at device level and you have App Activity tracking set to ON then location will be tracked.

Note that a fair number of users like these features. Google starts suggesting common destinations based on starting destination in Maps, Weather apps will remember the most recent location weather was checked from and much more.

"Lying" is an extremely strong word here. Usually it's more like "the situation is more complex than this story says".

> If you have web and app activity off this is probably not true and the AP is lying.

However in this case this is absolutely true, and Google recently lost a lawsuit in Australia over it: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/australia-rules-goog...

As the article it self says, Google collects and stores location from a number of different sources, and this setting only affected one of them.

There are other lawsuits ongoing:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/did-google-viola...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/unredacted-suit-...

What is "App Activity tracking"?

I know how to turn "Location Services" on and off. I know how to turn "Location History" on and off, as well as use Google's interface to delete my current history. I can't find anything on Android "App Activity tracking".

But we're specifically talking about having "Location Services" on, but "Location History" off, that's what the article suggests is being recorded and available for warrant anyway. Since the posts at the top of the thread was suggesting deleting your "Location History" data -- but the article seems to suggest that if you still have "Location Services" on, it's still recording you and available for warrant. I don't think there is any reporting that standard Android/Google record you available for warrant if "Location Services" is turned off though.

It definitely makes it more confusing that there are several different settings/services, each of which may be called slightly different names in slightly different places, and it's not always clear how they interact with regard to what information Google is actually recording. That is part of what's making this conversation confusing and I'm not sure we're all talking about the same things when we think we are.

"App Activity tracking" is a term that's confusing me. Do you mean this as a synonym for "Location History" and/or "Location Services", or is this a separate thing?

Location services is the device level control. You can pick which devices pump locations out and turn it off entirely for a device if desired. Google only tracks location from a device if you give them the OK (most do for maps / weather etc). Then they use that location to communicate with their servers and serve you the data you want that is location based. This location (and they enrich it with wifi stuff etc) is available to all apps on your device that have permission to use it plus all server they connect with that use it.

Separately for google apps themselves you can go here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068

Because they will track location at app level across both play and ios etc. So even if you are on a device WITHOUT location service, google may still be getting your location data through an app on the device.

You generally also need to turn off Web and App Activity tracking if you don't want tracking in apps.

https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols?settings=app&...

I used to have that off, but I actually found I liked getting the various suggestions (google figures out your commutes and common destinations based on starting points from what I could see - pretty convenient).

I keep location services off unless I'm actively using Google Maps for navigation (you don't need to turn it on to just look at a map of an area). I'd be more comfortable if my phone had a kill switch for GPS, but it doesn't.