I stumbled upon the Location History feature offered by Google, clearly less advertised as their other services - and it made me realise that the data generated by our devices is way more than we think, and is stored by hardware/app providers in a manner that is surprising, to say the least.
Location History is a tool to track all the places you've been with your Android Device, with timestamps - plotting your movement without you even knowing. Ofcourse it may have been designed to help you track your position at a particular date and time, but the perils of this data going to someone else are big.
Here's how it plots your movement:
All this, along with the associated time lines, can be viewed by anyone who can access your phone for a few minutes, or someone who knows your Gmail credentials.
Apple users can now stop smiling - Apple devices sync your location data as well to the cloud.
And technically, we are the ones who authorise all this. Remember the long "Terms and Conditions" page at the device startup screen to which we 'agree' without reading, such things are slotted in there somewhere in the small print.
I couldn't help but wonder what the consequences of this might be - if not now, then maybe a decade down the line. And it looks pretty vulnerable to me. What do you guys think ?
Location History is a tool to track all the places you've been with your Android Device, with timestamps - plotting your movement without you even knowing. Ofcourse it may have been designed to help you track your position at a particular date and time, but the perils of this data going to someone else are big.
Here's how it plots your movement:
All this, along with the associated time lines, can be viewed by anyone who can access your phone for a few minutes, or someone who knows your Gmail credentials.
Apple users can now stop smiling - Apple devices sync your location data as well to the cloud.
And technically, we are the ones who authorise all this. Remember the long "Terms and Conditions" page at the device startup screen to which we 'agree' without reading, such things are slotted in there somewhere in the small print.
I couldn't help but wonder what the consequences of this might be - if not now, then maybe a decade down the line. And it looks pretty vulnerable to me. What do you guys think ?
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