Somehow something somewhere inside me doesn't trust Google is doing it right here and I'm afraid of the actors who have access to that despite the whole differential privacy gibberish.
Dude, seriously? This title is so editorialized it makes me want to barf. The location information is available to everyone. Not just governments. Jesus.
This data is available to all and is aggregated/anonymized. From the bottom of any of the PDFs:
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These reports were developed to be helpful
while adhering to our stringent privacy
protocols and protecting people’s privacy. No
personally identifiable information, like an
individual’s location, contacts or movement, is
made available at any point.
Insights in these reports are created with
aggregated, anonymized sets of data from
users who have turned on the Location
History setting, which is off by default. People
who have Location History turned on can
choose to turn it off at any time from their
Google Account and can always delete
Location History data directly from their
Timeline.
These reports are powered by the same
world-class anonymization technology that
we use in our products every day and that
keep your activity data private and secure.
These reports use differential privacy, which
adds artificial noise to our datasets enabling
high quality results without identifying any
individual person. These privacy-preserving
protections also ensure that the absolute
number of visits isn’t shared.
3 comments
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These reports were developed to be helpful while adhering to our stringent privacy protocols and protecting people’s privacy. No personally identifiable information, like an individual’s location, contacts or movement, is made available at any point.
Insights in these reports are created with aggregated, anonymized sets of data from users who have turned on the Location History setting, which is off by default. People who have Location History turned on can choose to turn it off at any time from their Google Account and can always delete Location History data directly from their Timeline.
These reports are powered by the same world-class anonymization technology that we use in our products every day and that keep your activity data private and secure. These reports use differential privacy, which adds artificial noise to our datasets enabling high quality results without identifying any individual person. These privacy-preserving protections also ensure that the absolute number of visits isn’t shared.