[seanflyon]

It mitigates the risk. Someone cannot do bad things with your location information if they do not have your location information.

[imgabe]

I think it is naive to think that a bad actor who intends you harm will be stopped or even slowed down by the fact that there isn't a log of every location you've visited.

[seanflyon]

I think that that is a ridiculous statement. Of course giving a bad actor more opportunity to act badly increases the risk.

[imgabe]

A threat to your safety or your freedom needs to be dealt with directly by eliminating it, not hiding from it. If you're envisioning a bad actor with the resources to compile and analyze a comprehensive log of your location, the simple fact that you use service A instead of service B is not going to do a thing to stop them if they're out to get you. You have far bigger problems on your hands.

[seanflyon]

What about a potential threat? You are not allowed to "eliminate" those. Maybe just don't give that potential threat more power.

[imgabe]

"Potential threat" is an unbounded set. If you're going to guard against every potential threat you will not be able to spend your time doing anything else.

I asked because I was curious about what sorts of unique threats are presented by, for example, a database of location data. So far I haven't seen any that aren't already present via far simpler means.

[seanflyon]

It does not take an unbounded amount of time to simply not give information to an unbounded set. In fact that takes no time at all.

The point is not that the world will end if we give away our location data, only that doing so has a non-zero cost.