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Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

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101–110 of 296 posts

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#101
post #24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my wife and I just ordered dumb phones and an AWS 2FA key fob (remember those?) which will be here this weekend, we're selling all our screens except one family PC. I sold off my Oculus Rift and gaming PC a month ago. We're going to have to buy a flashlight, GPS or maybe just a map book, calculator, a CD player, a Blu-Ray burner, a day planner, a wristwatch, a kitchen timer, get a library card, a shared calenda…

Please write this up in a few months to share your experiences.

That's my plan. I'm hoping to find other people in my city (Kansas City) that want to start down a similar path. I want to write more but I'm at work and really need to get a few hours of productivity in today. I'll make sure to keep track of my experiences though!

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#102

Looking at the My Activity details is actually pretty creepy. Starting today working backwards, Google includes "Used Phone," "Used [my launcher]," "contacted [messaging site]," "Used [alarm clock app]," several overnight repeats of the messaging site when I received alerts, my Chrome-based website visits from yesterday, my foray into Android Settings yesterday, etc. It all serves to make me happy that I'm using Fire…

can you provide a link ?

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#103

A recent podcast (TAL? Radiolab?) just discussed the retreats Google has made over time with respect to privacy and intrusive advertising. I tried to find it - someone have a link? This very much continues the theme. It is important to note how much Sergey and Larry hated advertising and the belief they held that any advertising based search engine would inherently corrupt itself.

There was recently a bit on NPR (Here & Now?) about how Facebook did not shy away from this type of advertising, whereas Google balked at it initially after public outcry. It seems they have finally caved in.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#104
post #37

The marketers and advertisers have finally won. Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe, but this confirms it. It's like Facebook, they're beholden to the non-developers and non-software engineers who frankly don't care about other people's privacy and only see the dollar bills. So glad I'm evaluating other email providers and use Privoxy for ad-blocking.

I recently moved to using https://mailbox.org/ to host my email under a personal domain name. I've been very happy with their service. (not affiliated with them whatsoever)

I've been happy with https://fastmail.com/

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#106
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My marriage isn't in shambles or anything like that. Just not great. We just feel like we've been on autopilot for years. It never really "became a problem", it was just always a problem. We were both glued to our screens. We never did anything. My daughter is 18 months old and will sign and say "birds birds" because she loves birds and wants to watch videos on Youtube. If we turn it off she starts screaming she's so…

I have similiar issues with games. I dread open ended ones - Witcher, Skyrim - because of the prospect of them never ending. But it's worse than that because the least resistance in gameplay and I will abandon the game. For instance, I've haven't been able to play more than 10 minutes of Cities: Skylines because it gets overwhelming. At least now I accept that I don't have to finish games. That it's ok to even uninst…

Please consider Board Games as an alternative to Computer Games. There has never been a better time to get into the hobby - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKgz-UBEhss :)

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#107
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that for other services but I do not see an easy alternate to Android. People are moaning about Microsoft tracking with Windows 10 which is mostly on home devices. In reality Google is worse, they are tracking us 24x7 via our smart phones.

Is Cyanogen mod wed to google services?

The OS [mostly] doesn't matter. Google Play Services does most of the tracking job, see https://microg.org/

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#108
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has DuckDuckGo email and an app suite?

Just switched to FastMail this past weekend, and I recommend it. For an app suite, I recommend Sandstorm.io.

Could you explain your use case with Sandstorm? I find their homepage to be ambiguous/not really sure what they're offering.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#109
post #17

Google seems no better than Facebook when it comes to privacy, and I'm not just talking about how far they're willing to go in tracking users, but also how they are willing to lie and violate their users' trust so they can collect more data. Facebook is now getting into trouble in the EU for breaking their promise about not sharing WhatsApp data, and yet Google still goes ahead and does this. I hope the European Comm…

And when that happens every American on HN will go "look at that old crusty EU, getting in the way of progress again with their bloated regulations".

The free market fallacy.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#110
post #9

Earlier: We will not combine DoubleClick cookie information with your personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent. Now: Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google's services and the ads delivered by Google. So opt-in becomes opt-out.

To be honest, google is far past the point where i'd trust them that when I "pause" tracking or delete history they actually do so and not just show me an interface which says so.
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