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A question that we think is difficult to answer in a totally exhaustive way: Is being tracked by Google a problem? The most common response we would receive during a conversation would be: “no, me anyway I have nothing to hide“. We want to talk about this and to do so we take as inspiration an article published in Tutanota blog entitled: “Using Google location tracking can put innocent people in jail“.
An undoubtedly very strong title, it couldn't be otherwise given that Tutanota offers very good private services and is a direct competitor of Google in terms of services e-mail (and the calendar). The title though it's not entirely clickbait.
Is being tracked by Google a problem?
Let's start as we often do from the basics: Google thanks to Android and all its applications that we have installed keeps track of our every move. With Google Maps for example it keeps track of any of our trips. Inside a (disturbing?) timeline it also lets us know if we were at the time walking, riding bike or if we were driving a car.
It took us a long time to write this article to find the right words to talk about it. This because it is not our intention to engage in psychological terrorism And we don't want to scare anyone unnecessarily either. This is why we anticipate by saying that we will talk about events really happened but only in the United States. In fact, it is there that there seems to be a big problem with the geofence requests to Google by Police and FBI. What are geofence requests? Now let's find out together.
The biggest problem, which is also the one we try to make understood as much as possible, is not so much the current situation but the fact that history changes and governments change. And what for many today is a "fun and useful thing", like position history, for someone else it has already become a nightmare.
In the United States it is happening more and more often (Google observed an increase of these requests of the 1500% from 2018 compared to 2017 and of 500% from 2018 to 2019) that law enforcement forces Google to provide them with information they have about who was in an area at a specific time. Google initially provides pseudo-anonymous data. When a likely suspect is identified, law enforcement can force Google to provide more precise data. Besides this, always in the USA It seems to be trendy to use contact tracing apps to track movements of the protesters. We report an excellent EFF guide for demonstrations.
Two nightmare stories
The article on Tutanota's blog resumes the story of Zachary McCoy, a boy who was the prime suspect in a burglary because of his bike ride. The Police, not knowing which way to turn, made a geofence request to Google. That is, he asked Google to have the GPS connection data, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cell phones of users in a certain area for a certain period of time.
That data showed that Zachary had ridden his bicycle around that house several times. In the end he was found innocent, but he had to get a lawyer involved after Google sent him an email telling him that the Police had requested his data. A bad story fortunately ended well, even if we can't even imagine the nightmares that boy may have been through.
Is being tracked by Google a problem? In the United States it is becoming so
Several such stories are emerging in the United States. For example, for example Avondale, in Arizona, a boy he spent six days in prison for a similar reason. And so on lots of other news.
As we anticipated, we do not want to terrorize anyone, currently in Europe this procedure does not seem to be authorized in any way. At least not when it comes to small crimes. This news only concerns the United States where the Police and FBI are using it this tool more and more often.
The only thing we would like to say is just to be careful not to underestimate the data we give away at private companies. There is always someone willing to use some excuse (yesterday terrorism, today coronavirus, tomorrow?) to tell us that if we want the our privacy is respected then we are just unconscious (or the obsessed).
How to be less tracked by Google
Let us always remember that, beyond any backdoor or tracking in some way secrets (take a look at this video: Does Google also track us in airplane mode?), we are the ones actively accepting Google's control of our lives. For example we can start with disable location history. Furthermore, it is possible to be less tracked enter business management And disable all the wonderful Google “personalized experiences”.
This is also what we mean when we talk about regain possession of our data. If it is true that the best thing is certainly choose an alternative, at the beginning of ours change it may be useful to start with disabling all customizations. Just to understand that you can live just fine without it.
If you then decide to finally do the big step and abandon Google remember that it is always possible to take all your files away thanks to their service Google Takeout!
References for this article can be found here: Tutanota blog, Phoenix New Times, NBC And many others.
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