Tag Archives: Google

You have become the new currency

Posted on by
Reply

I was alerted to the contents of the privacy policy for Google Payments by an episode of the BBC series – Billion Dollar Deals and How They Changed Your World – in which the presenter Jacques Peretti makes a rather astonishing (for me at least) discovery …

Take Apple Pay, there’s a small amount of money they make in each transaction. But with Android Pay, which is run by Google, they don’t take anything. So what’s going on?

The answer lies in the small print of the terms and conditions: “we may collect information about the transaction, including: Date, time and amount of the transaction, the merchant’s location and description, a description provided by the seller of the goods or services purchased, any photo you choose to associate with the transaction, the names and email addresses of the seller and buyer (or sender and recipient), the type of payment method used, your description of the reason for the transaction, and the offer associated with the transaction, if any.”

Remember that space in the transaction, the space where business makes money? Now that space is about data. You have become the new currency.

This piqued my interest as I have been using Android Pay for a few months. In doing so had I also given my consent for my personal financial transaction data to be harvested by Google?!

For the uninitiated, Apple Pay and Google Pay let you create a digital copy of your payment cards, which are held in a secure virtual wallet on your mobile phone. You can then make contactless payments using your phone instead of the physical cards.

The Apple Pay security and privacy overview states: “Apple Pay doesn’t collect any transaction information that can be tied back to you. Payment transactions are between you, the merchant (or developer for payments made within apps and on the web), and your bank“. That sounds perfectly fair and reasonable, but what about Google?

The current Terms of Service for Android Pay includes the line: “Your use of Android Pay is subject to these Android Pay Terms of Service and the Google ToS (which together, for purposes of these Android Pay Terms of Service, we refer to as the “Terms”), as well as to the Google Privacy Policy.”

The Google Privacy Policy includes a link to the specific privacy practices with respect to Payments, which contains the aforementioned small print concerning Google’s collection of payment transaction information.

So yes, by virtue of using their product I did unwittingly give Google permission to ‘spy’ on my spending habits. This financial transaction data has intrinsic value and it’s obvious why Google would like to get their hands on it, but I didn’t expect the banks to be so lax as to allow it to be shared in this way.

This revelation left me wrestling with a dilemma. There is no denying that the simplicity of making small payments with a quick tap of my phone is really handy, but I value my privacy more than the convenience factor.

I just can’t abide my personal data being exploited in this way and so have reluctantly removed my payment and loyalty cards from Android Pay and I won’t be using it again. Sorry Google, but how I choose to spend my hard-earned moolah will be kept between myself, the retailer and my bank from now on.

Gmail attachments not working?

Posted on by
Reply

I’m assuming you’ve found your way here because you too are having difficulty viewing image attachments in the Gmail app for Android?

I found that thumbnail previews of images were displaying fine, but when I tapped to view the full image the progress bar would scroll around indefinitely.

In my case the problem was caused by Android’s Download Manager, and the solution was relatively simple.

Go into your Android Settings screen, select Apps, swipe to the ALL tab and scroll down to Download Manager.

Tap on Download Manager and then Clear data.

Download Manager

Exit the settings, go back into Gmail and hopefully you should now find that attachments are working again.

GSecure: Encrypt your Google Drive

Posted on by
Reply

Google Drive has finally launched, but privacy campaigners have already reviewed Google’s Privacy Policy and raised questions about the legal ownership of files you store on ‘your’ G Drive.

But what Google can’t see they can’t use right? 🙂

Using EncFS and some tools you can create a totally secure encrypted filesystem on top of the standard Google Drive in under 5 minutes.

Mac OS instructions only below.

First download and install Fuse4X and a version of EncFS which uses the Fuse4X APIs. Thanks to Simone Lehmann for providing an EncFS Mac installer at http://www.lisanet.de/?p=128 (also mirrored here).

To create a new encrypted volume (stored locally at first to prevent the EncFS key from being synchronised with Google Drive):

encfs ~/Desktop/_Encrypted ~/Documents/_GSecure

Answer ‘yes’ when prompted to create the new folders and choose ‘p’ for pre-configured paranoia mode (256-bit AES encryption). Enter a secure EncFS password when prompted and you’re done.

Now the filesystem has been created we can deal with securing the key.

umount ~/Documents/_GSecure
mkdir ~/.keys
mv ~/Desktop/_Encrypted/.encfs6.xml ~/.keys/gsecure.xml

The commands above move your key from the EncFS filesystem into a hidden folder in your (local) home directory

Now move the entire ~/Desktop/_Encrypted folder (minus your key) into your Google Drive:

mv ~/Desktop/_Encrypted ~/Google\ Drive/

Finally download my GSecure application and copy it to your Applications folder.

The first time you run GSecure it will prompt you for your EncFS password which it stores in your local login keychain. The password must match the secure password you set in a previous step.

To mount or unmount the encrypted filesystem simply run the GSecure app. For convenience copy it to your Mac OS Dock for quick access.

Opting-out of Google Location Server

Posted on by
Reply

In September Google announced their intention to comply with requests from European data protection authorities and offer a method for opting-out of their Google Location Server (GLS).

Peter Fleischer (Google’s Global Privacy Counsel) has today published an update on the European Public Policy Blog and Google have added specific opt-out details on their Maps Help page.

What is GLS? It’s a location service that most Android smart phones use to request your current location. Your smart phone could simply use satellite positioning (GPS) to accurately pin-point your location, but GPS consumes battery and generally only works outside.

Instead of using GPS your smart phone attempts to discover your location by scanning for nearby WiFi access points. It gathers the relative signal strengths, network names and unique network addresses and sends the details to the Google Location Server (GLS) for processing.

The GLS checks its database of WiFi access points and returns an estimate of your location. If your local WiFi access points are known and already in the GLS then it will return a fairly accurate location, almost on a par with GPS, for a fraction of the power.

Google built their WiFi location database while collecting data for Google StreetView and it is constantly updated and augmented by smart phone crowdsourcing. The manner in which Google collected this data has been controversial and Google have been investigated for breaches of interception laws. As a result Google has been forced to offer this opt-out scheme to appease regulators.

So what do you need to do to ensure that your own WiFi access point is not included in the Google Location Server database?

Simply append “_nomap” to the SSID of your WiFi network and Google will remove it from their database the next time a device sends information to the GLS.

It’s undoubtedly an inconvenience to change your WiFi network name and re-associate all your wireless devices, but if this scheme is adopted by all the mapping services (Microsoft, Apple, Skyhook) then it could well be worth it.

Google Calendars not visible on Android device

Posted on by
2

Have you added a Google calendar and it’s not showing up on your Android device?

Try this:

Go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > All

Then:

Calendar > Clear data

Calendar Storage > Clear data

Google Calendar Sync > Clear data

Then go into Accounts & sync and perform a Sync now

Your new calendar should now be visible on the device.

If you’re also syncing an iPhone, go to http://m.google.com/sync from your iPhone and select which calendars will be visible on the device.