Is Google’s Latitude app an opt-in for invasion of privacy?
Besides my daily emails alerting me to my Microsoft Lottery win and the $26 million inheritance someone is willing to share with me, a total stranger, I found another interesting missive in my spambox. A message from Google was hiding among the garbage and nearly was deleted.
Curiosity got the better of me and I opened it. Here is the email for your amusement:
From noreply@google.com
to {Fred’s secret email account}
date Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 3:06 PM
subject You are using Google Latitude and reporting your location
mailed-by friendfinder.bounces.google.com
signed-by google.com
Hi,
To protect your privacy we would like you to know that Google Latitude is running on your mobile device and reporting your location.
If you didn’t enable this or want to stop reporting your location, please open Latitude privacy settings or sign out of Latitude. To learn more, visit the Latitude Help Center.
Thanks,
Google Latitude Team
(c) 2011 Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. Terms of Service | Privacy Policy
This email from Google was legit, despite the salutation “Hi,” with no name and being mailed by a server called “friendfinder.bounces.google.com.” A word of advice: don’t trust email from any server or email address with something like “friendfinder”. I can find friends for myself, thank you very much.
In spite of that internal warning, I knew I had to read the email. It definitely warns me that Google Latitude was running on my Gingerbread-powered smartphone.
Out of a need to scratch another curiosity itch, I ran an app named Latitude, thinking it would provide me with my location. It does that, but a lot of other stuff is happening behind the scenes.
It comes up with a list of suggested friends and you can send them another annoying email to ask them to join another group. After exiting from that screen, it shows you where you are on a map. If you have other friends running Latitude, their location will appear on the map too.
In the settings, there is a useful screen that gives you a selection of restaurants, bars, ATMs, coffee houses, attractions and gas stations. I selected gas stations and it lists nearby filling stations as expected, but displays an advertisement for “Cheap Gas In My Area” via ask.com.
Pressing on that link, it comes up with an ask.com search results for cheap gas that is not too helpful. It would be nice of Google would just list the prices of gas at the various stations. In the top answers was a site to find the cheapest gas in the UK – so much for using my location to give me some quick and useful.
The directions function works quite well. You can get a map or written instructions. You can either select a suggested target or enter your own address. I was given a choice of a restaurant I had previously checked into with Facebook, but I may have had that address entered in Google maps before.
You can also build your favorite list of locations.
This is a nice free app for finding some places to eat, enjoy some adult beverages or find the nearest gas station. If you manage to talk a bunch of your friends into using it, you can all try chasing each other.
A word of caution: make sure you sign out of this app when you are done using it, or it will track your location and use up your battery quite rapidly. Sign out by going to settings to sign out.
Remember, Google will warn you about the privacy issues the first time you use it, so don’t complain about privacy issues!
If you lose your phone and left Latitude running, just go to https://www.google.com/latitude and see where your phone is located. It does not have the resolution to find where in your house you left it last.
