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Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

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Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#251

Post by Mystrl »

pmyjavec wrote: post #52
throw2016 wrote: post #19

I think duckduckgo often becomes an alternative that isn't an alternative, in the sense yes its there, you are frustrated with Google's behavior and you persist for a whole day and then have to revert back to Google with tail behind legs so it's more of an alternative in name. With the sheer scope of Google properties there is always going to be a tempation for 'value searchers' within the organization to give in to…

To be honest DuckDuckGo is fine, you just need to put a little extra effort in. I'll admit it takes some getting used to but I happily use it now. Also as others have stated the 'sp!' bang is handy.

put a little extra effort in

So it's hopeless then. You're never going to convince anything resembling a sizable portion of the population to put in more effort for no easily appreciable benefit.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#252

Post by godshatter »

akerro wrote: post #6
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?

Just don't have Google account and clean cookies and history regularly[1], forbid saving 3rd party cookies (built-in in Firefox) and noise your canvas generator [2], block 3rd party JS, CSS, media and fonts [3], control your referals your browser sends on each click [4] use VPN or Tor on startup. You don't need to bother with those tools, they will just work in background (µBlock requires some configuration). [1] htt…

I've also found it helps to use different Firefox profiles for different things, like hobbies, going to banks, going to anything google, programming stuff, etc. I have noscript, umatrix, and ghostery installed on each profile. I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but there is a Firefox command-line switch to bring the profile manager up when run.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#253

Post by kotajacob »

FUCK__GOOGLE wrote: post #44
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.

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.

Everyone's talking about switching emails, but realistically how difficult do you think it will be. Changing it for all the services you use and informing everyone? Or are you just planning on setting up forwarding for a while... (Asking because I'm trying to make the switch myself)

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#254

Post by dredmorbius »

skinnymuch wrote: post #237
dredmorbius wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am using (and hating hating hating hating hating) Android. I've been watching for alternatives. 1. Cyanogen Mod: This inherits too many of Android's fatal flaws. 2. FirefoxOS: Oh well. (It's dead, Jim.) 3. Ubuntu Mobile: It's still alive, though small. 4. Windows Mobile: Not my thing. I may head to a small-form-factor notepad. I really like the concept of a folio-format tablet + bluetooth keyboard, though nobody se…

Windows Mobile has some of the issues you mentioned, but why isn't it your thing? It's a beautiful OS. Plus your post made me a bit sad again remembering webOS. How I miss it!

1) I'm a Unix kid at heart.

2) I can't forgive Microsoft the 1980s and 1990s.

I'm leaning toward the idea that a terminal and emacs is about 99% of what I really need.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#255

Post by dredmorbius »

ebalit wrote: post #230
dredmorbius wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Automatically proposing the best bang query would be awesome. It should be doable to predict the best bang from the query. Google does something like this when it shows images or scientific articles on top of other results. DDG could even predict that it needs to fallback to Google in last resort.

So ... the best bang for the buck? ;-)

DDG's auto question-answer stuff is pretty good. Not quite as polished as Google, but IMO far less annoying. Google thinks it knows better than I what I want. DDG seems willing to allow me to provide reasonable prompts. "Weather" and "what is..." queries, for example.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#256

Post by eridius »

compiler-guy wrote: post #238
eridius wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entirety of social discourse and information sharing is to influence behavior. Personally, I don't agree with your unstated assumption that having someone else influence your behavior is automatically bad. Hell, you're doing that right now with your comment. That said, there are plenty of other reasons to value privacy other than not wanting to be served effective ads.

The question here is, "Are Google's advertisers really the ones you want to influence your behavior?" What interest of yours do they have in mind? What interest of society's?

Well, their interests are to make sure you see ads that are relevant to your interests, because advertisers are only happy if they actually sell whatever it is they're advertising. And on the face of it, seeing content that's relevant to your interests instead of content that's not seems like a good thing for users (completely ignoring for a moment all the scummy ads that prey on fear or ignorance to sell bad products). Speaking personally, if I have to see advertising, I'd rather see advertising that interests me instead of advertising that doesn't. However, I am not willing to sacrifice my privacy to do so.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#257

Post by jhasse »

kotajacob wrote: post #253
FUCK__GOOGLE wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everyone's talking about switching emails, but realistically how difficult do you think it will be. Changing it for all the services you use and informing everyone? Or are you just planning on setting up forwarding for a while... (Asking because I'm trying to make the switch myself)

I've switched to Fastmail and still have my gmail address. It's just another folder and it get's fetched via IMAP. I also added the mail as an identity, so I can still answer to people with my gmail adress.

So no need to inform everyone, just use your new address when you're asked.

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#258

Post by jhasse »

dredmorbius wrote: post #203
drieddust wrote: post #56

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.

I am using (and hating hating hating hating hating) Android. I've been watching for alternatives. 1. Cyanogen Mod: This inherits too many of Android's fatal flaws. 2. FirefoxOS: Oh well. (It's dead, Jim.) 3. Ubuntu Mobile: It's still alive, though small. 4. Windows Mobile: Not my thing. I may head to a small-form-factor notepad. I really like the concept of a folio-format tablet + bluetooth keyboard, though nobody se…

Have you heard of F-Droid?

> Cyanogen Mod: This inherits too many of Android's fatal flaws.

For example?

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#259

Post by aiiane »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #211
robg wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I turned everything off years ago. Still off today.

Me too, but I'm not sure what it means. Do they stop collecting the data or do they just stop using data for ad targetting?

That specific setting controls the latter.

There are separate controls for data collection (e.g. turning off Web History).

Re: Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

#260

Post by aiiane »

barnacs wrote: post #110
0xmohit wrote: 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.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Google does work really hard to ensure every user's settings are honored.
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