Reminder: Your smartphone is likely tracking your location

So?

every movement of most smartphone users is being recorded, often without their knowledge.

The only people that have a problem with this are those who have something to hide. So what if Google knows I go to the beach three or four times a month. I just can’t understand why people are making a big deal out of it. It’s just a cash grab. The average person is recorded on security cameras upwards of 40 tines a day.

I trust my cell-phone operator to keep my location, as tracked by their antenna towers, secret and not share it with the rest of the world for their financial gain.

I don't have GPS working in my phone at all.

It's surprising to me that people are so relaxed about their movements being recorded and shared with all and sundry.

Do the hustleToday  08:12 am JST

every movement of most smartphone users is being recorded, often without their knowledge.

The only people that have a problem with this are those who have something to hide.

Everybody has something to hide. Maybe not from from whoever makes your phone, but certainly very few of us are comfortable being an open book to everyone else on the planet. And unfortunately, anyone who has paid the slightest attention to tech news in the last several years knows there is no guarantee that the information kept by the people who make your phone won't be breached at some point. Even big companies like Google have been caught with vulnerable systems that can be compromised by malicious actors with a little bit of tech knowledge.

Google knowing your movement habits is probably not a big deal for most people. The fact that Google might have a security vulnerability that allows hackers to access their record of your movements and sell it on the dark web? That is a bit more concerning. And Google doing this secretly means we have had fewer outside whitehat hackers testing their systems and confirming that they are secure.

It may not be the end of the world, but there are valid reasons for innocent people to be concerned about this.

Shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. If you're not paying for a product, YOU are the product.

These companies want to have it both ways— offer "free" services, but with the all-too-often unspoken caveat that the condition for free use is heavy, non-anonymized data collection. As much as they want to claim their data collection is anonymized and untraceable, I find that very hard to believe. Their best business model is absolutely to connect data with specific people as a way to sell that target to advertisers, not just aggregate data sets.

I really hate Google and this is not helping their image.

Flashlight apps sharing location information???

Good reason to get an iPhone. That way you can choose whether to share your location or not.