[HN Gopher] What's in my location history?
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What's in my location history?
Author : zdimension
Score : 51 points
Date : 2024-06-30 21:45 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (zdimension.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (zdimension.fr)
| mmarian wrote:
| Looks like this shouldn't belong in Show HN as it's a
| (interesting!) blog post?
| dang wrote:
| That is correct: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html. I've
| taken Show HN out of the title now.
| zdimension wrote:
| I'm sorry, I had completely misunderstood what Show HN means. I
| thought it was the prefix for indicating the post was made by
| the poster (what the fine folks at Reddit would call "OC").
| Somehow I had missed the
| https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html page.
| pvg wrote:
| That is confusing but you can do something similar-ish for a
| written self-post by writing a comment in the thread saying
| you're the author, etc. Tends to make the discussion somewhat
| better too since it seems to reduce tropey first post type
| comments.
| nemo1618 wrote:
| I was very annoyed when Google recently announced they were
| deprecating Timeline for Web:
| https://support.google.com/maps/answer/14169818?visit_id=638...
|
| They frame it positively, of course ("now your data lives on your
| device!") but AFAICT it's all downside. I can't browse my
| location history on a nice big screen, and (very annoyingly) the
| app does not let you view your aggregate history over the span of
| a month or year -- only a single day. Plus, if you lose your
| phone, you lose all that precious data, unless you configure the
| app to automatically sync your history to Google's cloud...wait
| what? Wasn't _not_ doing that the whole point? Just baffling.
| zdimension wrote:
| Agree with you. I get the intention (a lot of people do find it
| troubling that all their location data is sent to Google, and
| appreciate this change), but I don't really care about that for
| my data, I just want to have everything available so I can
| analyze it!
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Then grab it from your device and analyse it. Why should
| everyone suffer just because you want to be sloppy with your
| personal data.
| sneak wrote:
| Consider for a moment that the FBI and CIA can access and
| search all of the location histories for _everyone_ in one
| central location without a warrant.
|
| Perhaps Google recognizes what an existential threat to a free
| society that is.
| bricedouglas wrote:
| That is scary. However, being able to see my own data is more
| important to me in this case.
| theamk wrote:
| At least CIA can do this already via cell tower logs.
| secabeen wrote:
| They can already do this via the cellular phone networks,
| which need your location to provide the service. Yes, they
| could discard that data once it was no longer needed, but
| that is subject to subpoena and preservation orders, so it's
| not that far to a location history DB anyways.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Mobile network location history is a lot more coarse than
| what Google can provide. Things like interference and
| reflections limit the precision most cellular networks can
| provide even when actively probing for a phone's location.
| With mmWave things are a lot more precise, but reflection
| can happen even in mmWave configurations.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't think Googs knows what free is. They have replaced
| that word with "ad supported". If TLAs want access to that
| data, they can just pay for it like everyone else. Gives a
| whole new meaning to "targeted" ads
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I'm immensely annoyed by it as well. I frequently used that
| feature to figure out useful, local information.
| sjf wrote:
| A couple of years ago they redesigned the mobile experience for
| timeline and since then it's become so unresponsive it's
| basically unusable.
|
| I don't know why they needed to kill the web interface if they
| still let you 'backup' your location history to the cloud.
| rrdharan wrote:
| The timeline backup is encrypted clientside before upload.
|
| Meaning no casual FBI or police warrant is gonna vacuum it up
| (at least not from Google, they'll just go to the cell
| providers / towers instead as siblings have pointed out).
|
| Obviously yes NSA and CIA and various other nation state
| attackers will just get it directly off your phone or evil
| maid you or surveil you in any number of other more
| traditional ways.
| netsharc wrote:
| Someone mentioned geofence warrants, i.e. cops/feds asking
| "Hey Google, tell us which accounts had devices found in
| these time-space coordinates!", I guess they'd be asking
| mobile providers to do more logging as an alternative.
|
| A Google account is probably more useful than a SIM card,
| which might be anonymous or have exchanged hands from the
| registered buyers, if you as a cop can ask Google to hand
| over the emails or IPs used by this account, you can find
| the person's identity and address (if using home IPs
| subpoena-able by asking the ISP).
|
| I wonder if it's not just American police, imagine this
| question being asked by Russian FSB, or the "good guys" in
| the form of the Israeli authorities.
| pomian wrote:
| It's there something like this for Apple?
| simonw wrote:
| I wrote a tool a few years ago that could convert your Apple
| Health data export into a SQLite database. I haven't run it in
| a while though so there's a chance it doesn't work with the
| latest file format: https://github.com/dogsheep/healthkit-to-
| sqlite
| xpressvideoz wrote:
| > Best viewed with Netscape Communicator 4.
|
| I wonder if the author actually tests the site with Netscape!
| djyde wrote:
| That's interesting, I found out that Youtube history data can be
| downloaded as well, I think I can also do a data analysis to look
| at my youtube viewing history and see what interesting things I
| can find. I wonder if anyone has already done something similar?
| lexlambda wrote:
| I haven't done it, but I want to. A very important thing you
| should know is that only the most recent 5000 videos are kept
| in the history export, so my advice is to download it
| frequently.
|
| What I've been doing is regularly getting the .json dumps
| takeout.google.com and merging them. (for around 4 years now)
|
| I plan on eventually processing that data later to track usual
| statistics, but also for example my interests over the years
| (by grouping and then searching for common topics like
| Minecraft, Haskell, Covid, ...).
| Grimeton wrote:
| Biggest issue with this: No button to turn it off.
| chasil wrote:
| Google provides a mechanism to disable location tracking.
|
| https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en
|
| https://www.androidpolice.com/how-to-disable-google-location...
|
| I've seen this as a small part in more general articles on
| increasing privacy in all of your Google settings.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They're also purging server side location data and moving it
| to devices.
|
| https://support.google.com/maps/answer/14169818
|
| https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-
| histor...
|
| https://9to5google.com/2023/12/12/google-location-history-
| ti...
|
| From the last link, importantly:
|
| > Update 12/15: This change means that Google will no longer
| respond to geofence warrants from law enforcement that
| request information on all devices near a particular
| incident.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-.
| ..
|
| https://9to5google.com/2019/04/13/google-android-location-
| hi...
| diogocp wrote:
| There's always been a button to turn it off. I remember making
| that choice when I got my first Android phone, more than a
| decade ago.
|
| Not to mention that it has been opt-in for years.
| dewey wrote:
| There's also a community of people with dedicated "tracking
| phones" or GPS beacons to record every place they go and store it
| in apps like https://fogofworld.app
|
| The nice part is that it's not some data silo but that it
| supports open formats and you can import / export everything very
| easily.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I don't think I ever understood Douglas Adams's quote about
| digital watches and going down from the trees more than I have
| today.
| nswanberg wrote:
| I ended up losing nearly 15 years of my Google Location history
| during the switch to on-device, so if you're interested in doing
| analyses like this, be sure to back up your data on Takeout
| before you enable the on-device setting that nemo1618 mentioned.
| Once that setting is set, the data is no longer available on
| Takeout, and if the data didn't fully transfer to your device,
| which is what happened to me and to some others, it's gone:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/1diivt3/megathr...
| nickburns wrote:
| [delayed]
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