Consumer group attempts to lob Safari workaround sueball at Google... again Brit consumer rights advocates have appealed against the High Court's decision to block a multibillion-pound lawsuit aimed at Google over iPhone tracking. The group, which calls itself "Google You Owe Us", is led by former Which? exec director Richard Lloyd and backed by a litigation funding biz Therium. It is aiming to make …
And who will get the payout?
The fact that such as thing as a "Litigation funding business" is involved (or even frikkin exists) makes me very suspicious that the ordinary consumer is going to get SFA out of this.
It reminds me of the case in the US (I forget the details) where the consumers were ruled to have been damaged but because it amounted to peanuts per person it was suggested (by the lawyers!) that the lawyers colleges and law schools should get the the payola.
We need a "Danger Will Robinson!" icon for this stuff that looks good at first glance.....
And the exact reason I didn't join the DieselGate action against VW.
The only people who ever seem to be on the receiving end if litigation wins in this country are the lawyers. The very fact one has to go through the hoops outlined above is enough to demonstrate where the balance lies with the consumer losing out yet again.
>So just ignore the wrong things that Google are doing...
The unfortunate fact of life is that the mere fact you're using a phone pretty much nails where you are. Its unfortunate but that's the price of 'progress'. It seems that the models for things like radios and phones that we grew up with are very persistent, many people just don't seem to understand how modern wireless communications work so their expectations of how those devices should behave are unrealistic.
In the US all phones have to track their location because it facilitates the handling of emergency calls (that's why they all have GPS in them these days). The same principles that drive GPS can be used to determine accurately where a phone is even if the software doing the questioning is prohibited from just asking the phone directly. There is only one remedy for this -- turn the thing off (and I mean "power it down", don't just blank the screen).
....and nobody's forcing you to use Google's products. There are alternatives. They might not be as good or as convenient but then we managed to live quite well in an era of phone books, pay phones and card indexes. You can as well; you just can't have it both ways.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
