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There's Still No Sign of Privacy Labels for Most Google iOS Apps
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There's a gray area in between what you said and where I'm at. I have 17 years of photo and video history on Google Photos (I started with Picasa WAAAY back when that started). This includes all three of my kids from birth until now (oldest is a teenager). I can type in two names and it will (with about 95% accuracy) pull up every photo with those two individuals, yes even as babies. I can search locations, general terms like "beach 2012" and again, with about 95% accuracy, it hits those photos. It's pretty incredible. If I could find a service that was even 80% as good, that also allowed me to migrate metadata, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I want to throw a contrarian thought in here. I've attempted to de-Google my life in the past (about 1.5 years ago). I've gone as far as switching everything but Photos and Maps. Guess what, when you start spreading your digital life out like that, it becomes very difficult to maintain control of who's tracking what, which privacy policies are aligned with your goals, etc. Some companies give you MUCH less control than Google over what they do and don't track in your account, and are less transparent than Google as well.
I'm not saying it's right to have all of your eggs in one basket - that's dangerous. I'm not saying Google is not a problem when it comes to tracking, ad revenue, etc. What I am saying is that for their part, Google does at least give you very clearcut policies and very granular controls over your account, and a lot of other companies do not do that.
Edit: Also (@Apple_Robert) - to say "privacy be damned" is a bit extreme. I'm not a fan of the fact that Google is an ad company first and foremost. But if they had a "privacy be damned" attitude, their entire business model would collapse.
1) Full disk access is probably necessary for updating components in the /Applications folder, but I don’t blame you. Google Desktop back in the Leopard days was writing to parts of /System/Library it most certainly shouldn’t have, I think it was also overwriting system files. (Yeah, the first Mac release of Google Desktop was basically malware, but then, Google Desktop itself was basically malware.)
2) That’s likely how they schedule automatic updates on macOS. The only other ways, really, are to create a UNIX daemon or a launchd item.
3) They’re probably doing some kind of GUI scripting in their updates. That said, I have enough development experience to know that GUI scripting is fragile enough that you really shouldn’t put it in production code.
4) Probably necessary to ask for those to be able to offer them for webpages, which would still throw up a permissions box. But it’s your mic and webcam, you’ve got the right to be cautious about it. That’s definitely a reasonable thing to be cautious about.
5) Part of that is for Bluetooth audio and/or Chromecast discovery, I’m sure. But it’s Chrome, and it likely listens for Bluetooth beacons for that extra measure of privacy invasion.
It will be ignored. The majority of users still dont care about Facebook's privacy label.
As someone who DOES use an RSS feed app in lieu of logging in and subscribing, there are some very real limitations to it. One, YouTube’s RSS feeds are not in spec, they’ll often randomly serve up videos you’ve seen before as new feed items (with their original timestamp or with new timestamps). Two, you need to regularly clear your cookies to minimize tracking/filter bubbles/unusual or poor recommendations, but doing so resets the auto-play toggle to on. Three, YouTube offers basically no info in the RSS entry other than video title, channel name, timestamp, and YouTube URL, so no previews or description you can read without loading the link in your browser. Four, ads, but a good ad blocker will fix that. Five, no PIP support (unless you log in to a YouTube account with an active subscription, which defeats the purpose of using an RSS reader in the first place, unless you already use RSS and you just want videos in the same place as, perhaps, podcasts).
*YAWN*
Dog bites man.
Next? They join the hullabaloo over the 'oppressive' Apple store requirements that companies take more money, and Apple gets money too. Everyone wins? *sigh*
Dog bites man.
Next? They join the hullabaloo over the 'oppressive' Apple store requirements that companies take more money, and Apple gets money too. Everyone wins? *sigh*
Don't care, or don't know? I would guess the latter for a vast majority of people. Mix in some apathy due to lack of knowledge in this realm. Shoot, most people over 40 I've talked to about the Social Dilemma still don't understand the extent of the information presented and what it can REALLY be used for.
The privacy labels *should* be the beginning of people waking up to the extent at which their data is shared/sold.
You’ve had way better luck than me. My family/friends just don’t care. I don’t even bother anymore.
I’m still waiting for that non existent YouTube PIP. The web version thinks that 480p being “auto quality” is fine on my gigabit connection.
Actually, the majority of them are web apps anyway, yes? Other than Chrome, do any of them really have functionality that isn’t available through a website? I legitimately don’t know, I’ve mostly de-Googled my life (with the exception of two secondary email accounts through Gmail [which have too many accounts or email subscriptions I actually want to receive tied to them to completely cut off], YouTube [which I don’t use logged in], the occasional Google Maps usage for Street View in places Apple doesn’t support Lookaround yet, and a privacy minded fork of Chrome [hard to justify using Firefox these days, and Safari isn’t available when I’m stuck on a PC]).
Alternate theory: Google's internal iOS build system is a byzantine convoluted frankenstein mess using the internal version of Bazel, each app is made of dozens of different internal libraries, and they're having trouble listing the privacy label information from all the individual components and then propagating it through to the finished product.
But the more I test the more I find how interlinked functions are. Most recent was Battery Charging Optimizing... tied in to Maps tracking.
Makes me wonder just what is missing - omission - in these disclosures
“I honestly doubt the general android consumer even gives a ****.“
There, now it’s fixed.
I'm using the Testflight version of Chrome and Google updated it last week. So the conjecture that they stopped development on iOS apps over advertising is off the mark. As the article mentioned, Google has added privacy labels for some apps.
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You’re giving an advertising company control over your life. And no you have no control over that data.
That's not how these companies aggregate their data. Data without a face is almost useless to them, they will, using some metric or metadata, link a data-set with a human being. Just because a google account has none of your personal information doesn't mean the company doesn't already have a file with your name on it from some point in the past when you did, and all it takes is 1 algorithmic connection to link that existing and growing profile on you with that google account and it may as well have your name all over it because in Google's eyes they already know it's you.
Why Apple doesn't enforce devs with deadline and removal from AppStore if they don't comply? If they want to get the job done, be more strict about it.. Not sure if Apple care either that much as Google.. Wished I can find alternative to Google Photos, so I can delete the 3 Google apps I use?! After June, I'll not need Photos anymore.. til then..
Correct. Their concern is how to increase sales and market share (necessarily at the expense of competitors).