Alternatives to Google Products • Hacker News Board

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#111

Post by gear54rus » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:22 AM UTC

millstone wrote: post #67

cosmojg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's consider the incentives in each case and how they enable you to distribute your trust. Apple is a for-profit, publicly traded corporation. Their purpose is to make money, and they will likely do whatever they can to achieve that. More importantly, only they can see their code, not you and not other users. All you can possibly have is their word, and they will say whatever it takes to sell you their product. If…

This is silly. Apple publishes their privacy policy. If they were found to be violating it, they would lose business and be liable for expensive lawsuits. And security researchers are extremely good at finding these things. So yes, Apple has a very powerful incentive to tell the truth. As for the theory of "open source community," see the MyBTGWallet scam. This open source project, recommended by the Bitcoin Gold tea…

He's telling you about the fact that there's conflict of interest between you and crapple and you tell him an anecdote where some scum of this earth stole money and open source software was involved. Does this really sound like a compelling argument?

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#112

Post by 333c » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:26 AM UTC

tass wrote: post #96

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used Fastmail for years with a custom domain without a single problem. Amazingly great communications from the company too. Highly recommended but not free. (Less than $2/month though - so almost free.)

Are you sure about that price? It looks like it’s $50 per year allowing for custom domain, $30 without.

I paid $117 for the 3-year plan with custom domain (and that price is discounted slightly from the normal 3-year price), which comes out to $3.25 per month. So, definitely not under 2 dollars, but easily under 4.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#113

Post by jhall1468 » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:28 AM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #87

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #30

Recently I started shelling out $25 a month for a G-Suite account. I wish I could have kept my @gmail email address, as I think your own vanity URL looks a little tacky, but oh well. Anyway, for privacy but also security it’s been amazing. DKIM, DMARC, SPF, and S/MIME for mail. All attachments are executed in a special sandbox before moving to your inbox (delays mail a little bit). None of my personal data / content…

If your use of G Suite is only for email (and calendar), and if you don’t need phone support, there are better paid options out there that are a lot cheaper. Mailbox.org, Fastmail, Protonmail, Posteo (this one doesn’t allow custom domains) and more.

None of those are better than Gmail.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#114

Post by _emacsomancer_ » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:31 AM UTC

nemothekid wrote: post #2

I'm a little discouraged when I see articles like this that seem to be completely tuned for developers or look over completely decent pro-privacy alternatives like Apple. For example, the "best" calendar alternative is Etar which looks to a Github repo. Really? At the very least you could mention Apple Calendar. Is Maps.Me (which uses AdSense) really better than Apple Maps? I'm not a fan of hooktube either - it just…

I know it's not exactly your point, but Etar is pretty nice, and apparently is cross-platform (Android & iOS - which I didn't know), and exists on F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ws.xsoh.etar/), Google Play (it seems somehow wrong to link to the Google Play Store given the context, but it's easy to find there anyway), and Apple's App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/etar/id1217625781?mt=8). I think OsmAnd(~) [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.osmand.plus/] is probably a better choice than Maps.Me.

Given that alternatives to Google products are largely services rather than software run locally on one's own machine, you're probably right about the partial orthogonality of FOSS here since it can be hard to verify that the remote server is in fact running the software it claims it is, and from a privacy-standpoint it may be somewhat irrelevant (I recall even the FSF said something of the sort).

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#115

Post by sigzero » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:32 AM UTC

ishansharma wrote: post #91

dibstern wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spark is notoriously bad for privacy. This is a really poor recommendation given the article.

I am not aware of Readdle doing anything bad or having a bad reputation. How is it bad for privacy, just asking because I’m a regular user and would switch if it’s not good for privacy.

Your stuff goes through their servers to allow some of the features of Spark to work. Some people do not like that.

https://sparkmailapp.com/privacy

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#116

Post by IncRnd » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:33 AM UTC

auslander wrote: post #42

theamk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see that in the article. Search, email, drive, youtube, maps all have many non-FOSS entries. I am fairly sure that no apple product is mentioned because replacing all the hardware one has just for more privacy is likely too extreme for many. Not to mention that one of the biggest things you can do for your privacy is ad-blocking / cookie cleaning, and apple does not make it easier at all.

> biggest things you can do for your privacy is ad-blocking / cookie cleaning Very true. But there is no problem with apple, in fact Safari is first browser that is clearing cookies - ITP(2). I use uBlock Origin on Safari and Private browsing - no cookies at all.

Firefox has been able to clear cookies like that for years without any extensions.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#117

Post by ccozan » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:33 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #80

auslander wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. It is the same company, Ads driven company, you're expecting to be nice just because you paid few dollars.

No, the G Suite product has a clearly defined privacy policy that's quite different to the usual Google one. If Google violates it they'll be liable to be sued for millions, at the least. It's not "expecting to be nice", it's "entering into a legal and business relationship that stipulates niceness".

That is correct. Please read this whitepaper [0].

[0] https://storage.googleapis.com/gfw-touched-accounts-pdfs/goo...

Page 16 directly mentions: "G Suite customers own their data, not Google. The data that G Suite organizations and users put into our systems is theirs, and we do not scan it for advertisements nor sell it to third parties."

I guess, for me this is good enough and the 4 euros a month are negligible for the huge advantage of using the gsuite.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#118

Post by jhall1468 » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:34 AM UTC

auslander wrote: post #94

untog wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the G Suite product has a clearly defined privacy policy that's quite different to the usual Google one. If Google violates it they'll be liable to be sued for millions, at the least. It's not "expecting to be nice", it's "entering into a legal and business relationship that stipulates niceness".

Could not find full GSuite policy, hmm. The best I got is [1]. They do scan stuff, and for a long (con:) game, it is priceless. They'll have your kids school scores for example. scan and index your data to provide you with your services and to protect your data, such as to perform spam and malware detection, to sort email for features like Priority Inbox and to return fast, powerful search results when users search f…

They literally say why they scan and you are talking about your kids school scores. You clearly have an agenda.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#119

Post by sharcerer » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:37 AM UTC

grzm wrote: post #10

miguelrochefort wrote: post #4

What's wrong with data collection and tracking? Privacy seems extremely overrated here on HN. Am I missing something? Why would anyone take such efforts to avoid using Google products? That doesn't seem very rational...

There are plenty of discussions on HN (including ones where you've participated) regarding privacy. Different people value privacy differently (and privacy means different things to different people). You may not value it as much as others, and that's fine. Ignoring this as you have here with what appears to be a naïve question amounts to trolling. Please don't.

Is it wrong for me to trust Google? I think they have really great secure systems. Their security is the best, imo. Privacy is a bit of concern. I wish they came up with a win-win solution fir that. I dont have prob woth data collection, i provide data for making their systems better,ad targeting, they give me great services, and my data doesn't get sold. Plus, indirectly even Apple and other product users do benefit from it coz google is ahead of others in ML due to the vast data analysis they can do, and when they publish their results and papers, other researchers look at them and kearn from it. But i guess, the last part of my reasoning ( just thought if it right now) is somewhat dipshit coz this is quite obvious. But i think contrary to other's beliefs Google's impact on internet had been very positive. I mean they open sourced so many web standards without taking royalty. Had it been MS,apple they would not have hesitated. I read the book The Google Guys when I was 13, since then have been a G fan, tho I am rational, acknowledge their mistakes,which is difficult to do. Also, as a STEM enthusiast Google's research culture has always attracted me. Larry,sergey were the first 2 people I sorta idolized. Also, Google services like Youtube, Google have benefited me a lot as a student. Due to all tgese reasons, i am a bit biased towards Google. Tho, i try to filter out buas whenever I can.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#120

Post by IncRnd » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 3:40 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #97

flafla2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't have the data that Google et al has. All of the ML that apple does for example is done on-device or is privatized [0]. This goes for all of their services that Google has built their business off of: Messages, Siri, Maps, etc. People don't respect Apple's security because they trust Apple, they respect it because Apple has intentionally shot themselves in the foot if they wished to sell their data in th…

> Apple doesn't have the data that Google et al has. Huh? Apple potentially has everything on the device, just as Microsoft does. Maybe they don't touch it, at least intentionally, out of respect (or just prudence). But if I recall correctly, they accidentally logged all Safari URLs for a while.

iPhone also sent geolocation coordinate files to Apple, until that was discovered. As you point out, there is a lot more than just the superficial concept of privacy, such as the Prism program that had/has a pipeline into Apple data. Like any large company, there are competing forces of strategically enforcing privacy and treating data in a way that doesn't respect privacy.