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Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

propublica.org

191–200 of 296 posts

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#191
post #43
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On mobile, rooting and using a hosts file to block malicious/ad domains is better anyway.

If you root, you won’t be able to use Android Pay (an advertised feature of the device) anymore due to the recent changes to SafetyNet that now trigger if even the bootloader isn’t locked.

I haven't ran into this and my phone is rooted. Is this for specific android versions or something?

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#192
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.

It is not engineering vs advertising. Developers are not some kind of perfectly pure and moral people, and engineering is not an end in itself, it's always to serve some other purpose.

There is no such thing as a tech/engineering company.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#193
Log out of Google. Now. And delete all their cookies. Consider deleting your Google account. Put your mail on an IMAP server. Your ISP probably offers one.

(I don't use a Google account. My last login to Google was in 2015, and that was to update a browser add-on.)

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#194
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.

>> the non-developers and non-software engineers who frankly don't care about other people's privacy and only see the dollar bills. If the developers and the software engineers cared about other people's privacy and saw anything beyond dollar bills the nons' would not have anything to sell.

This is not how corporations work.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#196

I expect google will experience outages >15 minutes for core services in the comung months. This is based on significant uptick in ddos sophistication, this has been referenced by Schneier-- although not in ref to Goog. If changes like this announcement convince people to move away; I am all for it. This just proves not only their power, but the danger of a single point of failure.

That is the opposite of my prediction. I predict that as ddos attacks become larger and more sophisticated, only Google and a handful of other huge operators will be left standing.

Realistically, if it reaches that point, why wouldn’t the first response be action on the part of ISP and backbone providers? I get that right now it would be extremely difficult and expensive, but at a point where DDoS has a significant effect on the market share of a company like Google, I feel like something would have to be done.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#198
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'm moving off gmail today, gonna just register my own domain and set up a server somewhere. I think that and hangouts are the last ways they got me, looking forward to deleting my account. It's so strange to be old enough to see the same mistakes of the AOL days repeated again at a much larger scale. I don't want your garden, I want my privacy, thanks.

Zoho Mail + Personal Domain = Free, No Ads. Company makes money by providing good-enough email product, encouraging you to use their other for-money good-enough SaaS products.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#199
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.

> Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe, [...]

Well, Google is hyped here on HN (a technology forum) a lot, also in the positive sense. So perhaps HN should start hyping different, more ethical correct, companies?

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#200

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…

Can you elaborate on DDG when you said: "it requires a little more effort when looking for certain things" What type of things?

Not OP, but:

1. Older results. DDG's recent (2. Books and journals. Google Books, Google Scholar, and Google Ngram Viewer are phenomenally useful tools, no doubt about it. There's no single resource which can substitute for them. Worldcat (library search) is good, if you've got access to various search databases (usually via an academic library) that's useful, and content access itself is possible (with questionable legality) via Sci-Hub and LibGen. The Internet Archive has less content, but greater legality.

3. Specific technical queries are generally less well answered by DDG, but easier to direct (via bang queries) to the appropriate source. StackExchange, Debian, Debian packages, Ubuntu, Microsoft KB, etc., are (I think) all covered. The ease of filtering from a general case to a specialised search is a real win.

4. Date-bound searches. I very frequently want to look for something between specific dates.

5. Less-prominent content. I use various sites (Ello, Reddit) as filing cabinets of a sort, and being able to search my own posts there is useful. Reddit's post search is good, Ello's not so much. DDG doesn't index (or retain) Ello results well.

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