[Cryptography] NYT: Total Surveillance Is Not What America Signed Up For

[Ondrej Mikle]

On 12/22/19 3:08 PM, John Young wrote:
> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/21/opinion/location-data-privacy-rights.html

I would like to comment on the article linked in the article above
(https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-privacy-tips.html)

"""
If you have a Google account, the company may already have saved a trove of
location data tied to your devices. You can prevent Google from collecting this
information by going to your account’s location activity controls and turning
off location sharing.
"""

This is not true, turning off location tracking in settings does not actually
turn it off completely, that's why there is a joint EU lawsuit:

https://www.beuc.eu/publications/consumer-groups-across-europe-file-complaints-against-google-breach-gdpr/html

AFAIK there was no resolution of the lawsuit so far.

A good test of this when you come to Chaos Communications Congress, even with
wifi turned off, Android by design does automatic wifi wakeup sometimes to get
location based on nearby APs and location-based apps send you to London,
Helsinki or other random city. (Not sure if it also reports the location if you
have saved the wifi config/passwords)

Regards,
  O. Mikle