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Alternatives to Google Products

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Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#361

Post by edanm »

blub wrote: post #333
edanm wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While all these things help , I still think it's true that for 99.9% of people, nothing really bad will happen because of info that Google collects. I mean, as terrible as "getting on the radar of someone that wants to make [your] life miserable" is, it's a relatively rare occurrence, and I doubt that Google is really making it that much worse (if at all). Disclaimer - would be happy to be proved wrong if you want to…

Disadvantages as a consequence of being spied on by the "googles" of the world are difficult to prove , because of information asymmetry: * were you denied entry in a country because the agent had a bad day or because of something you wrote on twitter? * did your insurance rates increase because of a market adjustment, or because of something your car mechanic or car manufacturer shared with the insurer? * were you d…

Look, I semi-agree in the abstract. It is difficult to prove in the individual case. In the aggregate, it's not impossible to prove, if still a bit hard - this is what economics/sociology research does, and a lot of governments have statistics/open access/FOIA/etc. So we can know how often these things happen.

Specifically to the things you list - again, I don't have statistics here, but based on my gut feeling - most of them barely affect anyone. Do you really think a large amount of people are barred entry into a country because they wrote something on Twitter? I'd imagine this almost never happens, at least today.

And btw, I kind of disagree with at least some of your items, like "were you passed for promotion because you're not good enough or because your employer found out through LinkedIn that you were looking for another job last year?". This is not what we were talking about, a case in which "Google" spies on you. This is your employer "spying" on you through your (supposedly public-enough) actions on social media. Changing the place you are looking for a job for from LinkedIn to "NewLinkedIn" won't make any difference for something like this, and is not the fault or responsibility of the company.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#362

Post by icebraining »

robbrown451 wrote: post #278
probably_wrong wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the average worst thing that could happen is that you end up going to court against someone (since we are thinking about averages, I'm thinking divorce), they obtain your data, and use that to build a case against you. If you were cheating, for instance, your location info could be used to show all your meetings in quite some detail. And even if you weren't, you can always bend your stats a little bit to make…

So how would this happen? Google gives them my data? I'm sorry but I don't get it. Google can't do that. Even if they work at Google they can't get it. I just represented myself in a week long custody trial (I won primary custody, and yes I went up against an attorney), and there were lots of risks involved, but this sort of thing seems to be about the smallest one I could imagine. I'd like to hear if this has actual…

Even if they work at Google they can't get it.

They can and have:

"in at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors' Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the incidents. In an incident this spring involving a 15-year-old boy who he'd befriended, Barksdale tapped into call logs from Google Voice, Google's Internet phone service, after the boy refused to tell him the name of his new girlfriend, according to our source."

http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#363

Post by syshum »

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 trust nothing I can not verify...

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#364

Post by syshum »

icebraining wrote: post #342
zdkl wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read a cyberpunk book. The mega-corp as focal point for resources, innovation and political clout is a scary thought. Consider the almost exclusive dataset they have moated "everyone" else out of, and the long line of disingenuous/unethical business practices. The privacy considerations are the proverbial top of the iceberg.

Using Microsoft products to avoid feeding megacorps would be a strange strategy.

Most of the fictional dystopia center around a single mega-corp not mega-corps... Thus if you have 3 or 4 Mega Corps that would be preferred to a single monopolistic Mega-Corp.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#366

Post by uxp100 »

everdrive wrote: post #358
shawn wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those can uniquely identify me So does your resolution. And that's hard to mask because JS usually needs to know it. If you're not using the browser fullscreen, chances are that you're using a unique innerWidth+innerHeight. As unsatisfying as it is, the current best solution seems to be not to care about privacy most of the time, and then take privacy seriously when you do. Whonix is excellent for this.

Don't huge swaths of people have the same resolution, though? Yes, I understand other things come into play here (OS, Browser, available plugins, etc) but I am skeptical that people are really building UUIDs based on someone's screen resolution. Or, if they are, that such IDs are meaningfully accurate.

Not if the browser is not full screen, this is resolution/size of browser window.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#367

Post by bdhess »

gregknicholson wrote: post #308
antpls wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't work at Google, I live in Europe and I agree with you. So far, we didn't heard of any breach in any Google product, and the history of the different products can effectively be turned off. I remember years ago, when I started to care about data collected about me, Google was one of the first company allowing you to download a part of your data. We can see the emphasize about security on the evolution of Andro…

> So far, we didn't heard of any breach in any Google product A breach would be a security issue, not a privacy issue. A security issue is where a third party accesses your data stored at Google without Google's permission. A privacy issue is where a third party accesses your data stored at Google with Google's permission but without your permission.

I don’t think those definitions are at all canonical, but are you actually suggesting that Google may have a “privacy issue” per your definition? Even if you assume they’re a bad actor, it’s hard to imagine a rationale for them to let a third party have a go at the data.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#368

Post by C4stor »

shawn wrote: post #238
chime wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a moderate resistFingerprinting setting? I don't mind my date/tz/language being known. There are 150m+ people living in my timezone who use en-US. I don't want my fonts, plugins, user agent, or detailed HW/graphics features (e.g. canvas/WebGL hash) being known. Those can uniquely identify me according to https://panopticlick.eff.org .

Those can uniquely identify me So does your resolution. And that's hard to mask because JS usually needs to know it. If you're not using the browser fullscreen, chances are that you're using a unique innerWidth+innerHeight. As unsatisfying as it is, the current best solution seems to be not to care about privacy most of the time, and then take privacy seriously when you do. Whonix is excellent for this.

Assuming there's 4k possibilities for width and 2k for height, that's 8 millions possibilities right here. Compared to ~2 billions of people accessing the internet, the odds of having a unique one seems really really low.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#369

Post by zaarn »

Iv wrote: post #58

A French non-profit named Framasoft [1] started a few years ago an effort named "degooglify internet" [2] and provides several open source solutions that you can self-host or use on their (arguably slowish) servers. [1] https://framasoft.org/ [2] https://degooglisons-internet.org/?l=en

Framasoft is pretty good. I'm sometimes turned off due to the french (I don't speak french at all, my own language and english are already too much).

I can recommend it however.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#370

Post by [deleted] »

beagle3 wrote: post #345
icebraining wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JS is often used to change the position of elements based on the window size. If you give it wrong info, it will break the layout.

True, but if you round it down to the closest multiple of (say) 32, you significantly reduce the information content while leaving JS/CSS layout essentially the same. Indeed, it will surely make resize look less sexy (jumping by 32s instead of pixels), and you might waste a few pixels of screen real estate on some sites at some times -- but it's the kind of tradeoff that some people happily do for more privacy. Relat…

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