Gadgetory

so if you're an Android user there's a feature you may not know about that's collecting data on where you go it's called Google Timeline and it basically is kind of a persistent location record every time you call up your location in Google Maps it makes an entry of you know this person was in this place at this time so that that is really useful for Google for marketing purposes if Chipotle wants to run a specific ad to people who they know who've been in three different burrito stores in the last month that makes it really easy to target they can look and see oh okay this person we know was we can see them in this burrito store here in this burrito store here in this burrito store here and then they can target that ad and that kind of ad targeting you know Google is incredibly good at it and it's one of the things that made them one of the most valuable companies in the world but the data isn't just useful for marketers it's also useful for police we found two different warrants asking Google to hand over data on suspects that would place them at the scene of a specific crime and all they need is a warrant they demonstrate probable cause that we believe this person robbed this bank on this day give us all the location records you have and that puts Google in a very tricky place legally they don't really have legal grounds to resist it and if they have it and police have probable cause to see it they really have to hand it over but the interesting thing is that record largely doesn't exist for iOS users Google Maps on iOS isn't producing that same persistent location record there's no timeline equivalent unless you install a separate Google app the result is that when police have a suspect with an Android phone they know there's this record that they can order Google to hand over and that record on iPhones just doesn't exist they're very interesting which is why I here is fine yeah let's look at something