If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo • Hacker News Board

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#41

Post by webkike » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #32

oceanswave wrote: post #17

I pay cash for all my transactions. I don't own a car because I fear that the registration systems for licensing and taxes will gather information about me and we know that those government data systems are most vulnerable to attack. When I travel, it's by bus only - requiring a form of identification at the airport is a front to government spying. Unfortunately, the bus systems are starting to require too much infor…

People, he's being facetious. But also specious.

There's nothing here to indicate that; not retroactive commentary at the end, nothing. If (s)he's trying to make a joke to make a point, (s)he's doing neither.

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#42

Post by verytrivial » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

pookeh wrote: post #23

Turning on E2E encryption by default and using your chat data for commercial purposes doesn't have to be a zero sum game... You can always extract important words from a "block" of chat messages, and feed that into your advertising engine, while keeping the exact sequence of your words and messages encrypted. Now if the AI bots require the exact sequence of your words to do NLP processing, then yea, you're SOL until…

Well, it isn't truly end-to-end if Mallory is at both ends with you.

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#43

Post by drdaeman » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #21

okket wrote: post #6

Opt-in encryption is no encryption.

Why? What does this mean?

Barely anyone opts in. Which means, effectively there is no security takes place in practice.

The idea is, our conversations that are not public, are private. Even if we're discussing some boring grocery list and not a top secret plan to take over the world.

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#44

Post by KingMob » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #16

okket wrote: post #6

Opt-in encryption is no encryption.

It's the end-to-end part that is opt in. Normal messages are encrypted in transit and while stored and only the machine learning system has access to them otherwise. https://vnhacker.blogspot.com/2016/05/security-and-privacy-i... Of course that means it is just Google policy protecting the messages internally and it probably isn't resistant to a warrant, but the messages are protected from other access.

Still risky. Given PRISM, I wouldn't bet on the safety of any unencrypted data residing in Google's servers.

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#45

Post by rjsw » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:07 PM UTC

oceanswave wrote: post #17

I pay cash for all my transactions. I don't own a car because I fear that the registration systems for licensing and taxes will gather information about me and we know that those government data systems are most vulnerable to attack. When I travel, it's by bus only - requiring a form of identification at the airport is a front to government spying. Unfortunately, the bus systems are starting to require too much infor…

I hope you don't leave the house without your dazzle makeup [1] to defeat the facial recognition cameras.

[1] https://cvdazzle.com/

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#46

Post by netinstructions » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

I find the outrage about 'yet another chat app / why did you start over from scratch / why not replace Hangouts' interesting relative to this statement from the article:

> Allo is fundamentally different in this way than Hangouts or Gchat.

So either Google can merge Hangouts/Gchat into Allo, and this Vice author gets upset, or Google debuts 'yet another chat app' but then everyone's confused/annoyed there's so many chat apps from Google.

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#47

Post by piyush_soni » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #25

oceanswave wrote: post #17

I pay cash for all my transactions. I don't own a car because I fear that the registration systems for licensing and taxes will gather information about me and we know that those government data systems are most vulnerable to attack. When I travel, it's by bus only - requiring a form of identification at the airport is a front to government spying. Unfortunately, the bus systems are starting to require too much infor…

I honestly can't tell if you're being sincere or exaggerating to make a point about how little privacy modern society allows. But, this is somewhat worrying: "If I could crinkle into a ball and fade away, I would, but, unfortunately, I'm still breathing." If that's not a joke, you should probably see somebody about your depression.

Or, he might be being sarcastic about how paranoid today's generation is, we'd never know without an explanation.

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#48

Post by colbyh » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

incepted wrote: post #7

This is the usual privacy hysteria knee-jerk reaction: "Watch out, the big companies are going to get data on you!". And people are going to react exactly like they've done before: if the service is worth it, they'll be happy to trade a few bits of privacy about themselves in exchange for the benefits. Also, I'm not sure the author of this piece understands what encryption is about since he laments that most people d…

the author doesn't seem to know much about how the internet works, quite frankly. they assume that there's some inherent level of privacy in any chat that isn't e-to-e encrypted. for instance, with FB:

"With M, you are speaking one-on-one with a bot, the bot isn’t monitoring every single thing you say to your friends."

how is that even relevant in this context? you're not comparing Allo to M in isolation, you have to compare it to both M and the Messenger product. in that case, FB is obviously harvesting data from your conversations. even if it is just to train M on how to communicate (a very big if) they would be insane not to.

the author doesn't understand much about the ecosystem as a whole (and considers Allo to be a market leader before launch). lazy reporting, and quite disappointing.

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#49

Post by cwyers » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

This kind of thing doesn't work. "Don't use X" is not advice most people are equipped to follow, and most of us who aren't trying to avoid prosecution from a state actor mostly end up wanting to talk to other people and so follow the herd no matter what our own preferences may be.

What's the solution? Instead of writing "Don't use X," write "Use Y." Don't use X, on its own, isn't actionable advice. Use Y can be.

Re: If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

#50

Post by wastedhours » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

webkike wrote: post #29

oceanswave wrote: post #17

I pay cash for all my transactions. I don't own a car because I fear that the registration systems for licensing and taxes will gather information about me and we know that those government data systems are most vulnerable to attack. When I travel, it's by bus only - requiring a form of identification at the airport is a front to government spying. Unfortunately, the bus systems are starting to require too much infor…

> I don't talk to others and when I do, I don't tell folks anything about me, I'm concerned that they may tell others and pretty soon everyone is going to start showing up at my home and my job and frankly I don't want to answer my door buy their stuff - or worse - they could be hiding violent tendencies. This is clearly paranoia. I'm not sure I can take anything from your comment other than you are very paranoid.

Or sarcasm. One or the other...