IIRC some of the social location sharing options have sold data in the past, eg Life 360 (I think they still sell data but claim that they've started making it aggregated/anonymous)
> turning on "Find my Friends" isn't going to make you any more vulnerable
There's definitely a huge difference between actively sending your location to a third party all the time and passive, often illegal data collection by the cell towers that can be stopped whenever you need by switching off the modem.
I have location services off, so at least my phone doesn't usually have my location, and neither does Google.
That is wildly optimistic.
There are still various Google processes that likely still gather your location, and certainly your phone carrier does.
I don't think Google does if location services are off.
I wouldn't trust that. Google considered that an app-level setting previously, not a choice the user made to deny location data to Google. That kind of attitude is likely to have seeped into the organization, and "We know better" / "The user expects location to work for this even with GPS off" is quite likely still the prevailing attitude.
At the very least, trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. Google has lost my trust, and assumptions of good faith have evaporated.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/14/google-lo...
The phones (GPS) and cell networks (towers) have your location anyway. The article -- and what the parent comment was talking about -- is social location sharing.
Although citizen tracking is a valid concern, turning on "Find my Friends" isn't going to make you any more vulnerable.