Amusingly, I've shared my location permanently with a couple close friends on Google Maps, and Google will not shut up about it, reminding me every month about it.
I get aggressive monthly warnings "Are you SURE you want to share your location with XX,YY,ZZ?". I wish there was a toggle where I could say "yes, I absolutely positively am OK with the privacy implications here, because I don't care very much; please forever stop bothering me."
This isn’t the point of the article. The point is that you can’t share your data with your friends without sharing that data with Google the company as well.
Going to have to say "duh" here. Short of an e2ee location sharing app, you have to send your location through an intermediary for your friend to see it.
I believe e2ee should be the default when I consent to share private information with someone through an intermediary. The libraries are already on every device with a web browser and the overhead is minimal, so IMO there's no excuse other than the intermediary wanting to look at the data.
It is "duh" that google has access to the information as they relay it from your phone to another party. But you could imagine it being like the post office, where in the US it is a federal offense to read someone's mail en route. Google could convey the location information with a "sealed envelope" policy. But they don't.
I get aggressive monthly warnings "Are you SURE you want to share your location with XX,YY,ZZ?". I wish there was a toggle where I could say "yes, I absolutely positively am OK with the privacy implications here, because I don't care very much; please forever stop bothering me."