Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

How meta: a solution to let FB know that you're very motivated to read an article about FB going to great lengths to snoop on user data!

Maybe that's the kind of data they need to reconsider their approach to privacy.

If I had to guess, it's all of them. By "them" I mean all the anti-virus packages that are targeted at consumers and small business. That seems to have been part of the business model starting over a decade ago. My guess is that the negative effects of anti-virus is what prompted Microsoft to first build free products and then eventually roll anti-virus into Windows.

I'd put it this way. My first inkling that something was wrong was when Norton Anti-Virus shifted to a subscription model and charged me full retail for a renewal back around 2006. What does disabling virus updates for ordinary users with the explicit intent of leaving them vulnerable says about a company's attitude in regard to long term trust?

I left Norton for Kaspersky and paid it protection money for a few years. It seemed refreshing at first. One day, a few years later, I learned how to look at my LAN traffic and saw how often I was sending data to its servers. It was more often than seemed reasonable. That's about the time Microsoft started providing its own free anti-virus and I started switching machines...the Windows XP Professional x64 box stayed on Kaspersky despite my misgivings until I upgraded it to Windows 7 because Microsoft did not port its anti-virus to that platform.

Spyware is often the basis for free software. Adobe Reader and Google Chrome and the Ask toolbar that shipped with Java are pretty obvious examples.

To be fair, Google DNS is more trustworthy than ISP DNS, and if you're using Chrome, you're not exposing anything that Google isn't reading anyway. DNS requests are much less informative than full browsing history.

It is probably better to use OpenDNS, but they used to do the same spammy redirect on NXDOMAINs that ISPs do (I think I heard they stopped that). To be honest, the real reason I don't use them much anymore is that their IPs are harder to remember. It's easier to do 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4.

Sorry, which goalpost am I aiming for? This one seems to be moving...

Although not quoting until now (my mistake), my reply was specifically in response to your previous point:

I don't think that's a reasonable comparison [...] it doesn't give insight into competitors metrics unless those competitors choose to share that information

The lines begin to blur especially when discussing means of accessing the internet (especially most efficiently/safely) and/or core (semi-artificially-required) mobile phone operating system components!

If nothing else they offer the path of least resistance. Any best-of-breed solution (GMail, Google Docs, Chrome - all somehwat a matter of opinion) or de facto monopoly-ish position (search, free analytics, Google Play Services?) by Google offers the potential for them to gain info on competitors in much the same way Amazon can take over succesful verticals originally occupied by a third party.

You should read up on J Edgar Hoover and the way he used FBI information to manipulate political figures who he saw as obstructing his mission.

I see Zuckerberg being in a position to do the same several steps in advance. If you send the right corporate execs the right embarrassing information they could certainly refrain from recommending that their company donate to an anti-Zuckerberg PAC.