Submitted by bog on Sun, 03/11/2018 - 09:08
As more people, including myself, increasingly rely on my smartphone for street navigation, there's one glaring advantage that dedicated street GPS units still have- they don't report your position constantly. (All smartphones with Google Maps installed report your position to Google, unless you've turned off location services in your phone.) The purpose of this position reporting is to collect data points which Google uses to generate the traffic data on their maps- see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Traffic. Supposedly, Google strips all identifying information from the data points, and also deletes the starting and ending points of a trip, for privacy.
Dedicated street GPS units haven't had Internet connectivity and so couldn't report anything (except possibly during map updates.) But this is starting to erode. Most of the newer Garmin street GPS units to your SmartPhone via Bluetooth. The higher-end receivers also include Wi-Fi to make map updates easier, but that does mean your GPS receiver is connected to the Internet, with all that implies. Of course, you can disable these features, just like you can disable location services on your phone. But will you?