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Alternatives to Google Products

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Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#161

Post by throwaway13456 »

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…

>alternatives like Apple

I would never trust Apple because they have consistently lied and cheated me - For instance, they throttled the speed on my iPhone, they hid the fact that my iPhone has more probability to bend and finally, as a cherry on top, they refused to honor warranty for a design flaw of theirs.

When they realized they fault, instead of making a free replacement, they charged me $30 for it.

Given all these experienced with Apple, to my eyes, Apple is no different than Google and I wouldn't trust any word of theirs as they've consistently been exposed time and again lying to consumers. So, I don't know where you got the idea of Apple being "entitled" to be in that list, but I'd say it's the right thing that they aren't.

>pro-privacy alternatives like Apple

I don't believe this. There is no evidence to support this as Apple runs on proprietary code. And you and I don't have access to the source code, so we have no idea what's going on on their servers. Ever wondered how Apple gets its data for its Apple maps? For all you know, they could be collecting your location information to build their database. Isn't that a privacy violation? I work in the Analytics industry, inside an iPhone, using Charles proxy, you'll be able to see random requests hit Apple's servers from time to time. For all you know, this could be info about you. You can't prove it nor disprove it.

I would never dare put all my trust into a single for-profit corporation whose sole goal is to maximize revenues and has been consistently exposed for unethical practices to its customers.

So, hope that answers why Apple isn't exactly a consideration.

[1] http://bgr.com/2017/12/28/iphone-battery-apple-apology-lette...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/5/24/17389220/a...

[3] https://9to5mac.com/2018/06/07/class-action-lawsuit-apple-wa...

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#162

Post by alsetmusic »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #121
astronautjones wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bing's video search (particularly for porn) is the best in the business.

> (particularly for porn) I had not considered Bing a serious competitor to Google's search engine until now.

>> (particularly for porn)

> I had not considered Bing a serious competitor to Google's search engine until now.

I can’t tell how much humor was intended here, but that’s a serious competitive point that had not occurred to me. Ever. It’s not something that MS could use in a marketing campaign, but could easily sway lots of people to give it a try when they otherwise wouldn’t.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#163

Post by 333c »

tass wrote: post #159
333c wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah I see, it doesn’t look like there’s a 3 year option anymore. Thanks for the info!

I just logged in to check and the option is not gone:

https://i.imgur.com/4gcnqzg.png

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#164

Post by alsetmusic »

izacus wrote: post #125
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…

Apple iCloud privacy policy mirrors Google's. You gain absolutely nothing if you upload your contacts, photos and other data to iCloud. Apple also regularly gives iCloud data dumps to US government (they approved and delivered data in about 80% of US Government requests in 2017: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/25/apple-second-2017-trans... ) (The exceptions here are iMessage and phone backups which are E2E encrypte…

> You gain absolutely nothing if you upload your contacts, photos and other data to iCloud.

This seems so deliberately wrong that I shouldn’t respond, but I will. Quick and easy synchronization of contacts, calendars, and photos are all features that I appreciate. What’s more, my fearful-of-technology brother tells me how useful they are to him. He mentioned photo sync as a benefit only a few days ago.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#165

Post by vortico »

A rule of thumb is that the more you pay for online services, the more pleasant, more privacy-respecting, and better support you have in the services you use. I use email hosts, file hosts, git hosts, and video hosts that are quite expensive, but the cost is totally worth it when you get used to the quality of service and product you get. There is very little reason for a company to sell your data when they make $200/yr from you. Even a slight rumor based on a misinterpretation of their privacy policy could lose them thousands of customers and thus 6 figures, and unlike the free services that couldn't care less if they lost thousands, they try very hard to keep their privacy policies honest and clear. It's just an application of the saying "you get what you pay for."

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#166

Post by [deleted] »

taneq wrote: post #48
auslander wrote: post #31

People, turn off automatic content download in your email clients. It immediately leaks when and from where you opened my email. And Search suggestions in browser, when you type into address field.

Are there any clients these days which don't have external content downloading disabled by default?

[deleted]

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#167

Post by jedberg »

This is all fine and well, but to be honest, I like how Google integrates all the different products. I get a better experience when search is customized to what is in my email, especially when I search for flight info and it tells me about flights I already have booked, or better yet, flights my in-laws are on that they forwarded to me and I'm now tracking to go pick them up.

Sometimes the ads it gives me are so relevant I actually click on them and I'm glad I did!

I just have a better experience where I'm constantly delighted by Google anticipating what I want because it knows so much about me.

I should be paranoid, I know, but I just like the convenience so much.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#168

Post by ajross »

mattkevan wrote: post #150
Godel_unicode wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally agree with you about the soundness of the FOSS==privacy argument, I think you're misstating it subtly. The claim isn't necessarily that the privacy sensitive user specifically will be able to audit the source but rather that someone somewhere will have done, and will have written about problems they uncovered. See also many eyes making all bugs shallow.

Not always. Heartbleed was present in OpenSSL for two years before anyone noticed. Many eyes make all bugs shallow, but if there aren’t enough eyes with the skills or the time then problems will remain deep, even for important software like this. Perhaps everyone thought everyone else had done the work?

Heartbleed was a very subtle security bug, the discussion here is about privacy violations. You think that detecting if, I dunno, mutt is secretly uploading your contact list is going to escape detection for years?

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#169

Post by systoll »

IncRnd wrote: post #116
auslander wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Firefox has an option to block all third party cookies in the manner similar to Safari 1-10's default behaviour. And like everything else, it lets you clear all cookies at once, or manually look through the cookies to clear them.

It does not have a feature analogous to safari 11+'s tracking prevention.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#170

Post by chrisper »

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…

Why are you paying $25? Isn't it like $5 or $9 per user?
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