Received notice of a change to the service in my inbox today. Seems icky to me.
Devices in the network use Bluetooth to scan for nearby items. If other devices detect your items, they’ll securely send the locations where the items were detected to Find My Device. Your Android devices will do the same to help others find their offline items when detected nearby
Your devices’ locations will be encrypted using the PIN, pattern, or password for your Android devices. They can only be seen by you and those you share your devices with in Find My Device. They will not be visible to Google or used for other purposes.
ETA: here’s the link to opt out: opt out of the network
If you cared about privacy you wouldn’t be using any Google products.
Quite true. As a Google Fi subscriber since 2015, I still rely on them for that service, but I’ve weaned off everything else to the extent that I can. There was a time that I thought the value outweighed the spying, but its impossible for me to maintain that delusion now.
We’re on the same boat with Fi. I only use it because it’s the only service I know about that I can pause and not have to pay when I’m not in the US. I don’t live in the US, but I but do have to travel there very frequently, so it’s an acceptable trade-off for me. And it works perfectly fine on GrapheneOS even With GMS off.
I’ve been out of the US since late '22 and they still haven’t cut my data or sent one email about it. I expected to lose it after 90 days. I get a google play services error once in a while about Fi needing it to have all permissions, but I don’t have any problems leaving them off. My next install of lineage I’m going to try no GApps and see if it still works. I know the LOS team say you need it for Fi.
GrapheneOS
Jail.
I’m driven by convenience, FOMO, and peer pressure, so go ahead and destroy my privacy and security, Google!
Snark aside, it seems like a really neat useful little idea that will 100% be used for some creepy corporate shit.
We can already tell you the age, gender, hobbies, kinks, frequently visited spots and how long they stay there, who goes with them and who they meet, what they think about, when they go to sleep, but wouldn’t you also like to know where they are and who they’re near when their devices are offline with Bluetooth on? We can do that now too! Creepy? No! They think it’s so they can [checks notes] find their device even if its offline.
-Google probably
To bad I don’t use Google
