DF reader Brian Ashe sent this, correctly pointing out that it pretty much nails Google’s approach to turning off location tracking.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/08/13/douglas-adams-plans

On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 5:35 PM, Steve Kinney <admin@pilobilus.net> wrote:


On 08/13/2018 07:41 PM, Steven Schear wrote:
> https://apnews.com/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb/AP-Exclusive:-Google-tracks-your-movements,-like-it-or-not

Google tracks my movements?  Not yet, anyway.

The cell tower networks do track my movements except when I leave my
$25.00 mobile phone behind or pull its battery.  But Google?  Not so
much.  Every so often they know when I was "at home" because I
voluntarily accessed one of their server farms.  Otherwise not.

Google Analytics and the ubiquitous "G+" links on a vast array of
websites, do not track my web browsing - one has uBlock Legacy and
NoScript to attend to that, respectively blocking all outbound requests
to blacklisted domains, and all outbound requests for Javascript except
where and as whitelisted.

The few occasions when Google does 'see' me on the networks, result from
voluntarily revealing my existence when accessing YouTube videos, and
occasional contact with a GMail account (via Thunderbird, not a web
browser) which I use as a spam trap and offsite backup server for
encrypted credentials logs and the like.

:o)