SoylentNews

frojack writes:

Many Android users buy into the whole Android experience, which is largely a Google oriented one.

Probably we Soylentils have been more aware than most, of the the depth of Google's knowledge of our on-line life, and what we do with our phones. Some of us have made peace with that trade off, privacy for utility. Others, not so much.

We've all known there is a certain level of tracking going on, especially if we leave our phone's location services on to take advantage of Google maps, or getting a weather report, or use Google search to find just about anything.

But Seeing this Page you might think twice about using location services when you don't actually need them. (No Google account, don't bother clicking the link).

The page contains the last 30 days of your travels, whenever your phone recorded your location for any reason, such as when you used maps, or any app asked for location, or when any number of other unspecified capture events occured. You can even select a time period on the page, and have it replay your travels.

Sometimes the routes are less than accurate, but the destinations are usually faithfully recorded. And even more precisely recorded if you get near any wifi router.

The recording can get a little muddled if you have multiple Android devices, such as a tablet and a phone on the same Google account, and you run location services to run both. You will see location reports for both devices interspersed. On minute you are at work, two minutes later you are at home.

(I have no doubt Google can track each device separately, but they don't offer the ability to show them separately on that page).

On my map, for one day, it recorded my position no less than 64 times. The page linked above offers the ability to erase your location history. I'm sure its effective and totally scubs the data. *cough*.

Some android devices have verbiage on the settings page about sending only anonymous location data. But how anonymous can it be when they are all logged to your individual account?