Privacy Lawsuit Against Google Rests On Battery Drain Claims 175
Jason Koebler writes: According to plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against Google, personal information about you and your browsing, email, and app-using habits that is regularly sent between apps on you Android phone is harming your battery life. As odd as it sounds, this minor yet demonstrable harm is what will allow their lawsuit to go forward. A federal judge ruled that the claim "requires a heavily and inherently fact-bound inquiry." That means there's a good chance we're about to get a look into the ins and outs of Google's advertising backbone: what information is shared with whom, and when.
Slashnerds know the price. I wonder about average (Score:4, Interesting)
Technology nerds, especially those who frequent sites like Slashdot where discussions of privacy are frequent and nary a day passes without mention of Snowden, know the trade-off of Google services*. I wonder how well non-technical people understand it. Google Now kind if shoves it in your face, making it very clear that Google knows when you're at work, when you're at home, what TV shows you like, etc. I wonder what percent of average people who don't use Google Now really understand what the cost of Google services is. It would be interesting to see a survey.
* I make no value judgement about the privacy cost. Some customers are okay with the privacy cost of using these excellent free services, other people choose not to. Personally, I choose to make that trade only with Google. One company has my profile, and in exchange I get many services.
Re:Slashnerds know the price. I wonder about avera (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I choose to make that trade only with Google. One company has my profile, and in exchange I get many services.
You can't really be that naive are you? When Google has your data, Google's business partners have it too (part or parcel), the law can have it through subpoenas, the NSA... just about everybody.
Besides, I suspect Google uses the data in ways I don't want it to be used. So even if it was the sole guardian of it, I don't want to give it to them. Not willingly anyway, and as little as possible when I don't have the choice - and people have less and less choice as days go by in the matter.
The data is valuable to Google, they don't hand ou (Score:4, Interesting)
> When Google has your data, Google's business partners have it too (part or parcel),
All evidence I've seen, and common sense, indicates that the data is very valuable to Google and they don't want anyone else to have it. They'll sell ads to other companies, which Google displays based on the data, but they don't sell the data. That would be giving the other company the goose that lays the golden eggs. Google prefers to sell the eggs, over and over again. If you have any evidence to the contrary, please cite it.
Of course the NSA illegally acquires data from most all email providers, ISPs, etc. Even the services that are explicitly based in privacy get NSLs, so to avoid that I could avoid using the internet at all. I'm going to use the internet, so the NSA will be able to snoop until that problem is handled using the three boxes - soap box, ballot box, and if absolutely necessary ammo box.