Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#141

Post by quest88 » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

whistlerbrk wrote: post #28

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.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/10/17/498...

They say what your last sentence said, so I'm guessing this is the podcast you're thinking of.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#142

Post by newscracker » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

jsingleton wrote: post #129

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've heard good things about both https://www.fastmail.com and https://protonmail.com so would be good to hear your experiences after a bit more use.

Recently I started a "paper evaluation" of paid, privacy protecting (to a good extent) email services. I found Fastmail to be quite expensive if one needs multiple accounts. Providers like Protonmail and Tutanota don't support IMAP or any other way to download mails (the web interface and apps are the only choices). That makes it very difficult (or impossible?) to move to another service and take one's older mails along. Protonmail does not support custom domains, whereas Tutanota does.

The cheapest solutions I like currently are posteo.de and mailbox.org. I have not started using either of them, but plan to move soon. Posteo does not support custom domains (it is heavily privacy focused and refrains from collecting or storing customer data as much as possible). So your only choice is to use one of many posteo.x domains for the email address. On the other hand, mailbox.org supports custom domains. Both support IMAP, web mail, migrating email from other providers, etc. Both these services and their websites are worth a look, IMO.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#143

Post by betolink » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

Just to give you and idea of how big of a deal this is, go to https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and check what third parties could learn from you, with your name on it.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#144

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #46

omouse wrote: 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.

This isn't a neat split along the lines of "All developers good, all marketers bad". What has won here is the pressure to grow, and the acceptance of society and governments to let them do it by any means. We are all complicit in this.

[deleted]

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#145

Post by m0ngr31 » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

wincy wrote: post #23

atrilumen wrote: post #2

> “Some new features for your Google account.” Oh, yeah, I remember that. I totally clicked "Ok, whatever." How does one not be herded like cattle by the corporations, without making a full time job of resisting it?

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…

I've looked into going back to a dumb phone in the past. If you don't mind, what phones did you order?

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#146

Post by guelo » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #66

pmyjavec wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, it's time to make a change and start educating family and friends about this issue and the alternatives. I always believed Google was successful because it was pushed and advocated for by geeks, I feel that those days are coming to an end. I use DDG and I think it's a pretty solid alternative, although it requires a little more effort when looking for certain things. Non-tech types have been curious about why I…

> I always believed Google was successful because it was pushed and advocated for by geeks, I feel that those days are coming to an end. Those days ended the day Google went public, and quite possibly well before then.

I think the change happened when Eric Schmidt left and Larry Page gave his "more wood behind fewer arrows" speech, which meant engineers down product managers up.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#147

Post by ocdtrekkie » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

yojex wrote: post #108

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, so I do all my documents and spreadsheets and stuff on Sandstorm Oasis, which is their managed offering. I can do a bunch of other stuff on it, and it's easiest to figure out the extent of it by just trying the demo yourself (https://demo.sandstorm.io) and checking out the apps and stuff. But in my case, I mostly use it like I used Google Docs and Trello before, that I can easily control my data on, and migrate to a self-hosting solution easily later.

Sometimes it's hard to explain Sandstorm because they have a wide variety of good use cases for it, and there's really not a lot of comparable software packages to it. (It's like ownCloud but it's not like ownCloud, it's like Docker but it's not at all like Docker, etc.)

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#148

Post by bogomipz » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

pmyjavec wrote: post #61

blowski wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a neat split along the lines of "All developers good, all marketers bad". What has won here is the pressure to grow, and the acceptance of society and governments to let them do it by any means. We are all complicit in this.

True, it's time to make a change and start educating family and friends about this issue and the alternatives. I always believed Google was successful because it was pushed and advocated for by geeks, I feel that those days are coming to an end. I use DDG and I think it's a pretty solid alternative, although it requires a little more effort when looking for certain things. Non-tech types have been curious about why I…

Can you elaborate on DDG when you said:

"it requires a little more effort when looking for certain things"

What type of things?

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#149

Post by blowski » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

RodericDay wrote: post #123

pyrophane wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two things I miss when using DDG: 1) The ability to easy filter results by date at 1 year 2) A last update date on the result. There may be a way to get these things from DDG, but I'm haven't had the time to look for them yet. Still DDG is pretty good, and obviously will get better the more we use it.

!year gets you some of the way there

That doesn't work for me. I can do `!syear` or `!gyear` to filter on Google or Start Page, but not with DDG results.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#150

Post by ocdtrekkie » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

jsingleton wrote: post #129

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've heard good things about both https://www.fastmail.com and https://protonmail.com so would be good to hear your experiences after a bit more use.

Yeah, ProtonMail was the other one I considered, but the price for storage wasn't nearly as compelling, and both had reasonably strong privacy stories. And now that I'm in FastMail, I'm really amazed at the flexibility and control it gives you, especially with connecting your own domain and stuff.

Back in the day, Gmail's driving appeal was it's pro features, and I'd argue that FastMail makes Gmail look basic. Also, I've opened two support tickets this week to ask questions and got responses within an hour or two.