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Comment by leoedin | Hacker News Reader

You give large corporations way too much credit. There's no evidence beyond your conspiracy theories that this is a feature designed for anything other than convenience (one which I and many others in the thread have found to be quite convenient).

Not every feature in Android is designed to be monetised. Google develop Android with the intent that users will use their app store/click on Google provided ads. They can only do that if they are seen to be offering a competitive, feature full product. The cloud-based syncing of your phone configuration is one of those features.

Having worked in various large organisations (including ones which are definitely part of the military-industrial complex) I can say wholeheartedly that there is no grand conspiracy. Most people, wherever they work, want to produce the best product they can.

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>You give large corporations way too much credit. There's no evidence beyond your conspiracy theories that this is a feature designed for anything other than convenience

Yeah, excepting the whole NSA issue, the fact that Google was previously caught/accused of war-driving every wifi net they could see with their streetview cars etc.

While the feature may be convenient, that does not preclude the worst case from also being true.

Facebook is convenient, but its pretty well proven now that the data conveniently stored within is harvested and mined by "infiltrators thereof"

>fact that Google was previously caught/accused of war-driving every wifi net they could see with their streetview cars

I am a bit amused when folks trot this out and forget to mention that Google itself discovered this, voluntarily came forward, owned up to the mistake, provided the information to the prosecutors and paid the fines related.

You would think if they were so determined to continue with this nefarious activity they might have been a bit more mum about it.

Google gathered wifi data to improve their location services. The capturing of unencrypted payload data was an unintended consequence of that due to poor software design. The initial wifi data collection was intentional and was designed to improve their location product (which it did - the Google Maps location service can be very speedy if it's near a wifi access point that google cars picked up - another feature likely to encourage people to use their product). The additional capture of packet data was unintentional. Numerous third parties have been involved in auditing google in their actions after it all came out and there's been no hint that they ever intended to do anything with the packet data they collected.

Facebook (and google) do "harvest" your data. They also mine it for relevent information from which they can show you adverts. There's no debate about that. It's not a conspiracy though - they state in their privacy policies that they'll use your data for targeted adverts. It's their revenue model!

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