Home » What is the Maps Timeline, the place where Google knows everything about you: how to use it and how to deactivate it

What is the Maps Timeline, the place where Google knows everything about you: how to use it and how to deactivate it

by admin
What is the Maps Timeline, the place where Google knows everything about you: how to use it and how to deactivate it

Online there is a secret place that is not so secret: it has existed more or less since 2009, it was once called Timelinenow it’s called Movements e it can be reached by clicking on timeline.google.com. And seeing it for the first time is a bit of a shock.

We wrote that it’s secret but not so secret because it is a page that Google does not hide but that few visit: it is where Big G collects all our lives, with information obtained mainly from the GPS sensor of smartphones. It’s a giant map of the world where each dot represents a day, a shift, a place. And where for each day the activities carried out, the movements, if they have been, are indicated done on foot, by car, by bicyclethe photos taken, the times spent in each place, the shops, restaurants and businesses visited.

Before explaining how this privacy nightmare works (or this useful tool, for the more inattentive), a couple of premises are in order: the page is accessible only to oneself, in the sense that no one can see the movements of the others. With the exception of Google, which somehow can see everyone’s ones. And this thing works almost exclusively if you have an Android phone, because iPhones are much more conservative from this point of view.

Against spam

The Google Call Filter arrives in Italy: how it works and how to activate it

by Emanuele Capone


Life summarized in a map

When you connect, what is in front of you is one map dotted with a more or less large number of dots red (your movements) and a series of menus on the left and at the bottom.

See also  neoom starts in Germany and challenges Enpal and 1Komma5° there

Those to the left they are used to go back in time: you can choose the year you want to view and then the single month of that year and the single day of that month. By clicking on the day, you will see that the writing often appears Places to fix: Google knows pretty well what we’ve been doing and where we’ve been, but in some cases it has need human confirmation of his estimates. By clicking, it is possible to provide it, or to modify the (few) inaccurate information.

The curtain that allows you to access the various years clearly demonstrates what was said before difference between iOS and Android smartphones: the writer switched from the first to the second in mid-2014, and in fact before that period the Position History is almost empty.

Down instead there is a bit of information and useful tools: in the last ten years I have allowed Google to memorize over 1450 places linked to mewhich I can view in order of frequency, made dozens of those that Big G defines Trips, i.e. travel to multiple places in a short period of time, and indicated which are my Home and Work places, which are always connected to me and I can search in Maps even while I’m driving, through Android Auto. In this part of the Travel page there is also, clearly visible, the information that Location history is on and there is also a trash can icon that allows you to Delete all History positions quite quickly.

See also  Caviar creates luxurious 18K gold Apple Vision Pro, priced at over NT$1.27 million | news

Chronicles from any day

To understand how this thing works, let’s take the example of any day in my life, September 13, 2019: I was in Rimini for work, to follow the Bike Fest (I later wrote about it here): at 10.32 I left the Hotel Sporting, walked to Parco Fellini, took a short bike ride, at 13.53 I had lunch near XV Aprile Park (in a place known for its tortillas, of course), I took my bike back, which I used until around 4pm. I reached the Rimini station, at 17.13 I took a train to Reggio Emilia, then I took a high-speed train to Milan, then another train to Genoa. AND at 10.35 pm I finally arrived home.

Scrolling through the day, you can click on the various items, see them in detail, see the map that concerns each onewith the various movements street by street, eventually eliminating them one by one, correcting possible errors (a restaurant confused with the one next door) and having a summary of everything: on that September 13, 2019, I traveled for about ten kilometers by bikeI walked just over 3 kilometers and traveled by train for over 180 kilometres.

Few years ago it was also possible to review the photos that had been taken with the phone, even if they were later deleted from the phone, which now no longer seems feasible. That’s a shame, because it was another useful way to remember things you may not remember doing.

What is Location History for?

Because this is basically the main purpose of the Travel page: it is a gigantic digital diary of one’s life, constantly updated and available everywhere (everything also works from a smartphone). It can be useful to relive a pleasant moment, to recover the address of a place where you have been but cannot remember exactly, even to try to contest a fine that we were where we really weren’t.

This, at least, from our point of view. Why from the perspective of Google and advertisers, that’s a whole other thing. From their point of view, this is an hour of mine. We reiterate once again that the Mountain View company does not share the map of individual people with anyone, but the information that goes into it, albeit with a certain degree of anonymization, definitely yes: Big G knows where we live, where we go, in front of which shops we pass, which ones we enter and which ones we spend the most time in. And it is on this information that so-called personalized advertising is built. And it is precisely this information that contributes to give us the feeling that our smartphone is spying on us and you listen to us (which we don’t, by the way).

All of this can be interrupted, in a simpler way than in the pastbut it should be remembered that in exchange for the information we give, we receive something: if you want Google maps, if you want to be able to use satellite navigation in your car with Maps, be helped to move from one point to another in a city it is not known, it is obvious that it must be allowed access to our location in the world. Which is the foundation upon which the page is built Movements of each of us.

Artificial intelligence

10 AI-powered services you need to know and use today

by Andrea Nepori



How to delete Location History

A first step that can be taken is certainly to disable geolocation from the drop-down menu of your smartphone: it’s very simple, just pull it down, click on the icon and it’s done. This also allows you to turn it on or off as needed, for example by leaving it always deactivated and activating it only when you are in an unknown place and need directions.

To do everything more effectively, and be sure of the result, you need to start right from the page Movements: at the bottom, click on Manage Location History and you arrive in the part dedicated to the localization of the section My Google Activities (which is this); here you can see if the Location History is active or not, and if it is, you can deactivate it, possibly also by deleting all the places recorded up to that moment.

A couple more things you can do are (just below) check the devices associated with your account and possibly remove them e set a monthly timer for automatic deletion of stored locations.

If desired, because it is somehow connected to this thing, one could also control and manage the product sectors for which Google personalises advertising on us. But this it’s another story, and we already told it on Italian Tech at the beginning of 2021.

@capoema

You may also like

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More

Privacy & Cookies Policy