151–160 of 308 posts
"Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this be…
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You can go a long way to blocking a lot of these by using some alternatives: * Using DuckDuckGo ( https://duckduckgo.com/ ). It is really decent and has good desktop and mobile integration. * Using a browser like Brave ( https://www.brave.com/ ) that blocks trackers etc. Android app is superb. * Using a Maps replacement like OSM ( https://www.openstreetmap.org ) on desktop and OsmAnd on mobile ( https://play.google.c…
> For what it is worth, as of June 2017 gmail no longer scans email content for ads The important part of that sentence is "for ads". Obviously, they don't do antispam out of thin air, they still have to scan email for it.
For instance I got an email earlier confirming a cancellation due to illness. It suggested I respond 'Thank you for your understanding'.
That's some quite good natural language stuff running on every email, presumably building a model.
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The conclusion I've come to regarding Google is that you just have to accept it for now. The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from any other provider that to not use them puts you at a great disadvantage. Google search is an order of magnitude above the competition. There is no serious alternative to Google maps. The level of integration that Google Calendar has with practically everything…
Neither is "fundamentally evil", and also both are. They are both corporations attempting to keep you in their ecosystem, using similar methods, that fundamentally make their money from targeting ads to you. There's no evil overlord at the top of either company (I hope) - their evilness must be judged by how likely each of them are to lead us into a techno-dystopia. And the more you consolidate to Google, the closer…
So the big plan to avoid Facebook's privacy creep is to put everything on an immutable, publicly accessible record which you don't control? Okay.
Personally, I think Google is just as terrifying, possibly more. As an example, just take a fairly normal life situation like going out for dinner with some friends, and think about how much of it goes "through" Google: --- One of your friends sends an email to 6 others, to ask if everyone's free for dinner on Friday. 5 of the 7 people involved use gmail or a google apps address. You've never heard of the restaurant…
The conclusion I've come to regarding Google is that you just have to accept it for now. The services that they provide are so above and beyond anything from any other provider that to not use them puts you at a great disadvantage. Google search is an order of magnitude above the competition. There is no serious alternative to Google maps. The level of integration that Google Calendar has with practically everything…
For Google calendar, almost any self hosted calendar service can easily compete with that.
Email is also easy to run yourself, as is Google Photos.
"Easy" meaning a task a CompSci student can accomplish during a summer or two of coding.
The authoritarian regimes' secret police would be delighted at something like this. People actually (well, not all of us) give them information themselves, and those who don't, sure do get tracked across the web. "Thoughts control" is very much a real problem, as the Google Memo scandal showed us. People dug out the irrelevant donation of Brendan Eich. Think about the power FB has, they know exactly who is the enemy…
At first they were fine with FB and similar because they didn't see how all that information they handed over to another was to be used, they only saw the advantages they were getting. While nothing has really changed in how the data is used they suddenly seem upset that someone else makes use of it for profit or gain.
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If I can affect just one person here today... Please please please stop using Gmail for important communication and account recovery (banking, mission critical services you maintain, etc etc). Use a paid service from a reputable company who does that one thing only and does it well. Too many Gmail horror stories.
"Too many Gmail horror stories." share one pls?
Google asked me to either have access to the phone number, and the old password, or to know the security question, have access to the backup email, and know the exact day the account was created on.
Google was not willing to provide any help, not even via the Nexus phone support, and even after a friend who worked at Google submitted an internal recovery form.
After I contacted the new owner of the phone number, and coordinated with him a way for me to authorize via SMS, backup email, old password, security question, and account creation date at the same time, I got back into the account.
In the account I found an email from Google's account recovery support thanking me for contacting them, apparently they had contacted the hijacker after I asked for help, not me.
After changing all data, I went through the login history.
The account was set to German, always used from Germany. Someone tried logging in via several different VPNs, and was blocked a few times, but allowed the last time from Russia.
I had learnt the account was compromised originally because Google sent me an email that an attacker from Russia had logged into the account and changed the password.
So, to recap:
Google realizes that an attacker connects and hijacks an account, emails me, but doesn't prevent it.
Google allows that person to change the password, and tells me that an attacker changed the password, but provides no way to restore it, and doesn't block it.
You can't restore with backup email, security question and old password.
Once Google's internal account recovery team was contacted, they talked with the attacker, not with me, despite being explicitly told I had no control over the account.
A random person was more helpful with restoring the account than Google itself.
Do NOT ever rely on Google, and write down your accountcreation date right now (on desktop, in gmail, settings, pop3 and imap, "pop3 active since" tells you the account creation date)
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> However, if you're able to leave or cut your usage, they extend no influence whatsoever. My friends often upload pictures of me, tagged with GPS coordinates and user; And even though most have stopped tagging me (as I have asked), Facebook often does offer them to tag me, which means that Facebook has enough pictures of me to identify me in random pictures (even though I never uploaded a single one myself). Google…
You can turn this off. You don't need to ask your friends to stop. https://www.facebook.com/help/187272841323203
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"Too many Gmail horror stories." share one pls?
Someone hijacked an older google account of mine, the phone number used had since run out and been sold to another user. Google asked me to either have access to the phone number, and the old password, or to know the security question, have access to the backup email, and know the exact day the account was created on. Google was not willing to provide any help, not even via the Nexus phone support, and even after a f…
Why did the backup email not worked? Or did they told you about the hijacking via the backup but said the only way to restore is via the number?
Isn't Facebook run by Mormons now anyways? https://www.google.com/amp/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_586848...
Where do you get Mormons out of that?