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I agree. I don't use Google services in any fashion. I do use Apple since i consider them the lesser of the evils, although i understand the risks I take in doing so. I use navigation selectively.
Yeah, luckily I haven't had that bug pop up yet. <knock on wood>
You probably use more Google services than you realize. It's just not the name Google specifically.
I can download offline maps to my phone so Google maps will still work even without cell signal. Would just lose live traffic notifications. And nothing in the factory navigation is really "up to date" unless you live in a large metro area where nothing has changed for 3-5 years. Even the newest updates you download are 3 years behind.
My wife stills gets targeted ads on Facebook and she has an iPhone. I have a Pixel, which is about as Google as you can get. Lol. But it's a lot better phone than other Android phones, doesn't have as many factory installed apps that you will never use. I'm not an Apple fan at all. I will stay with Google before ever switching to Apple. You want to talk about being tracked, my wife tracks her son's iphone, and my ex-wife tracks my son and daughters phones. And that's a built in feature on Apple. I would have to install an app on my phone to allow others to track me.
Yes, but I do try. I research companies that make the apps I use and which ones have a higher degree of tracking, like Gasbuddy. My location services is off in most cases or "only while using the app". I also shut down the apps that use location services after using them, there's very few that I leave minimized.
You can turn off other iPhones tracking you, but not Apple.
I can't stand google either but no matter what service you use it will track you. That's the whole idea of navigation so it can get you from your immediate location to a different destination. It's the same thing for traffic updates in YOUR location.
Yep agreed.
Sure someone will always track you but hopefully not google (at least not on Apple iphone if you don't even install google maps or any of their other apps and don't provide your google login credentials on iphone). As far as on desktops I use vpn to hide my location, and startpage and duckduckgo for search and even though can't completely trust them either (or anyone) I still feel google is the worst (their whole business model is about that alone as opposed to others like Apple and Amazon who at least make most of their money on selling hardware, software, etc). By the way after I did all this work to get off of google I am getting a lot less garbage via targeted ads in my social media accounts and via email (using outlook for that) so I do think it makes some difference and it's worth the pain of going through all this (at least for me). Having said all this I completely agree with you that someone else must be trucking us if weather and trafic updates are turned on by any application.
I definitely agree google is the worst. They are very intrusive. I too use duck duck go but unfortunately we'll never be able to be google free. All we can do is limit our exposure
I've heard other people say similar things on different threads.
Or the opposite. I live in a rural area, and I never see new roads put in. No need to put random new roads through the woods, or a corn field.
Other than phone apps like Google Maps, Waze, apple maps......, Which all sell your data and/or have ads, most navigation devices require you to purchase updates. Had an old Magellan GPS unit in 2009-2010 time frame that came loaded with maps, but if you wanted to update it, you had to pay for the updates. Same thing with Garmin and TomTom, or at least they used to be that way.
So you still paid for the map upgrades, it was just in the form of higher upfront cost
