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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

How much of your information does Google want? MORE!

This is a big reason why I carry a Graphene OS phone... and searched eBay for a Garmin GPS -- that cannot phone home! -- for my car.

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I actually picked up a mint Garmin from a thrift store for $10 for this reason. I always thought it was just me, I would turn GPS on and open maps on my LG v20, but would still get prompted about location accuracy every time. I upgraded to a Moto One 5g and the verbiage is different enough that I was confused into approving because it seemed to imply maps just wanted to turn GPS on (even though I already turned GPS on), upon later checking, Google Location Accuracy was enabled.

All information, and people are giving it to them for free. There is billions in dollar of profit from selling peoples data and the user gets nothing of that.

I still remember filling out my Facebook profile back when it was very new (after it was open to everyone but before it even had the timeline) and I'm just flabbergasted at how much information I was willing to fork over as a naïve child presented with a grid of form fields to fill out. crazy to see how it's only got more ridiculous over time. now Snapchat (which I'm about to convince my fiancée to uninstall so neither of us uses it anymore) is giving me notifications telling me about friends and family that I should add as friends, despite me never giving the app access to my contacts! I wish I could go back in time and convince my younger self about how bad things were going to get and why I should minimize my online footprint as much as possible. well, cat's out of the bag now...

I remember being a teen when Google Health rolled out (checking online now they gave up on it in 2012, no surprise) and writing down the entirety of my medical history in it.

Just to remind you, the user get the whole functionality of the app. That's the trade-off.

> That's the trade-off.

Only if the user is aware of that.

Users aren't aware they are using Google Maps?

No, most users are not aware of how much data they give up about themselves in order to get the whole functionality of the app.

For me at least, Google sends me monthly (quarterly?) updates on my location history and prompts me to review it. I assume people get this by default, and so anyone checking their google account email would see these emails and open them to see literally every single destination of theirs is permanently saved. They don't exactly hide it.

Not defending Google, they suck. But in this one instance I don't think it's that much of a dirty secret or anything. Just an open dirty behavior.

I've never gotten an email like that so its probably not a default setting.

To be fair, the user is getting a pretty amazing map/gps program.

It it worth it? Are they completely upfront about the data they’re harvesting?

You can opt out. Stand alone gps is still available. Open Street maps is an amazing open source program too.

My car has a 2010 gps. It works. It’s not great but it’s gets you close. In some ways I miss my old Tom Tom. It had the mr. T voice yelling at me where to go.

I just bought the Tom Tom app and paid for the maps I need. One of their big deals is privacy protection as no data is collected

Forgot about the stand alone gps apps. And most phones have plenty of storage for those.

I would love an app that would feed the data back into open street map.

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