My post relates very much to this one[1] which is a month old. Like their Samsung device, this feature is now coming to my Redmi device also. Today only I received the email with subject, <i>"Your Android devices will soon join the Find My Device network"</i>.<p>As always, the *real* privacy nightmare stuff is always hidden in between the large boring paragraphs or the fine print as they say. Here is the part which I think is the most problematic:<p>> How it works
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> Devices in the network use Bluetooth to scan for nearby items. If other devices detect your items, they’ll securely send the locations where the items were detected to Find My Device. <i>Your Android devices will do the same to help others find their offline items when detected nearby.</i><p>So, your devices are also supposed to co-operate by sending data to other devices which may want their location detected while offline. We are made to believe here that this data pertains to only our location and nothing else but once this thing becomes too ubiquitous, one can easily see the scope for surveillance capitalism by the powers that be?<p>This is very much like the Microsoft's recall scenario, I don't see much difference between this and that. At least there, the data is very much still on the user's device and doesn't leave its shores, this is arguably even worse. For such technology to be palatable to the power user, they must at the very least, be prepared to open source this code. I think recall would have still got some acceptance had Microsoft made the code open source. This whole "you trust me but I won't trust you" business is highly cynical and doesn't usually have a long shelf life.<p>[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1cn6ps5/should_i_use_googles_find_my_device/
I am afraid I am a bit lost as to exactly how 'Find My Device' network works, but I should do some studying after I post this comment. Well, these questions.<p>I would like to ask if you were made aware of this in the format of "Do you accept?" added to that notification email?<p>I guess what I mean is, this is something very new, yes? Aren't they supposed to ask you if you agree to them doing that? Or is there some strangely worded paragraph in the original agreement form that indicates they can add such a program without asking your permission?<p>And thank you for posting about this and answering my questions, if you will.