I agree. This link came at the perfect time.

A car dealership who botched a warranty repair on my vehicle is stonewalling me - once they realized the error was likely to cost them $2k - $3k, their service department deleted my file and began claiming no evidence exists that I had ever been to their location. I got the scheduling department to confirm my appointment and just found my location history for that day showing that I was at the dealership right on time during the appointment. Going to send this to the manufacturer's corporate complaints departments. Thanks for the heads up.

Dealerships. And people wonder why dealership groups are lobbying like crazy to keep Tesla out of their state.

I've been using this for precisely the reasons you mention:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/where-have-i-been/id64155398...

Google's location history is excellent and I'd gladly pay for an equivalent application which I could self-host and set up with the minimum of hassle, but having them do it creeps me out too much. I've not managed to work out how to get OwnTracks to substitute fully for it.

Awesome, thanks for the link. I had been using Moves by ProtoGeo https://appsto.re/us/PNDwE.i and it's not very accurate. Still good for going back and remembering that awesome random place you found on vacation after the fact so you can recommend it.

I also wish the NSA had something like a personal data explore, but I know that will never happen.

Unfortunately I've not found WHIB to be enormously accurate either, but it does well enough. The main nuisance is interpreting having paused whilst walking past an establishment has having gone in it. Even Google's version couldn't get this right, at least in my case.

a decentralized version would be cool

Explicitly decided to keep Google Maps' location history activated on my device for precisely the same reasons. I'm yet to use it in court or something like that, but the argument about human memory resonates with me strongly - I've used location history many times to review e.g. on which day I was in some place or other few years ago. (Or once, years ago, to check how exactly did I get home after one party.)

RE people saying "just take a photo and use EXIF", that won't work because I don't know in advance what locations I will be interested in in the future.

Do you mean ex ante? A priori knowledge is that which is independent of experience, as in deduced from pure reason; it doesn't just mean 'in advance'.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Thanks for this correction, I didn't realize "a priori" doesn't mean what I thought it means.

(I edited the comment to use "in advance" instead of "ex ante" though.)

in a more formal or philosophical context you're right, but the more colloquial "in advance" usage is not wrong per se (hehe).

I am not completely sure I understand what you want to accomplish, but I think you might find Moves (https://moves-app.com/) useful.

> That being said, I refuse to share it with scummy companies [...]

Moves is owned by Facebook (one has to decide for themselves about FB's scummyness).

Wow, I did not realize Moves was owned by Facebook. Guess I'll be deleting that app...

Or Life Cycle by Northcube. Kinda amazing.

Thanks: I installed it and will try it out for a bit before deciding if I switch to it or remain on Moves.

Seconding Life Cycle. Only stores the collected data on-device.

you could instead just snap a picture of every location you want to remember, you have the location attached as an EXIF

The things you think you'll want to remember later aren't the same things you find yourself wishing you had recorded when that "later" comes.