if you go under 'privacy checkup' you could easily turn off any data tracking that you don't want to share with google.
This website I think is kind of misleading we are not 'surrendering' our data as the website suggest, we are still in control of our own data, and we could control of how much data we want to share or don't want to share with google. And all those sharing also has benefits to increase the user experience. On top of that there is always a paid version like youtube where you don't get to see any ads.
Alternatives to Google Products
481–490 of 527 posts
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
After the constant succession of revelations of the sorry state of privacy, along with myriad data breaches, all I want a browser to do is lie and obfuscate. So I'll gladly take the sledgehammer boolean of resistFingerprinting for now. I've yet to come across an extension that does something like this so I'm presuming it's not possible via extensions? Are Mozilla working to make this more granular and let me whitelis…
For FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/random-agent-... I think this one is no longer working with the newest FF versions, but check back in on it every once in a while. For Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/random-user-agent/... Not as configurable as I'd like, but it gets 25% of the job done.
I actually used to use the Firefox one. IIRC when they changed the extensions system the dev announced he couldn't support it in the new system.
Time to give the chrome one a look, thanks.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
After the constant succession of revelations of the sorry state of privacy, along with myriad data breaches, all I want a browser to do is lie and obfuscate. So I'll gladly take the sledgehammer boolean of resistFingerprinting for now. I've yet to come across an extension that does something like this so I'm presuming it's not possible via extensions? Are Mozilla working to make this more granular and let me whitelis…
> After the constant succession of revelations of the sorry state of privacy, along with myriad data breaches... I remember reading an article about how Richard Stallman interacts with the internet a while back. I remember thinking that it seemed totally insane. But in light of the reality of 2018, I am coming around. The way I see it, I can keep tweaking privacy settings in a browser, or opting out of collection, or…
I agree. I'm coming around to some of his view, and no longer see him as quite so extreme. Still think he weakens his message with the alternative language, like "used" instead of user etc. Always have.
The difficulty of course is right now it's nearly everyone at it. Too early to say if GDPR will make an appreciable difference, though it seems like it should. So that leaves few choices outside of gnu everything or layers of hacks and browser extensions. I have hope that many services will start being much more careful in what tracking and data they actually need after recent events.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#484Hi all, I'm an engineer working on Firefox Platform (Gecko). In the linked blog post, the author recommends Firefox (thanks!) and links to a "privacy recommendations" for it, which include items such as "resistFingerprinting" settings. I'd like to remind everyone that turning on this setting has far fetched consequences to how you experience the Web. Your dates, timezones, preferred languages will all be masked which…
After the constant succession of revelations of the sorry state of privacy, along with myriad data breaches, all I want a browser to do is lie and obfuscate. So I'll gladly take the sledgehammer boolean of resistFingerprinting for now. I've yet to come across an extension that does something like this so I'm presuming it's not possible via extensions? Are Mozilla working to make this more granular and let me whitelis…
NoScript, uBlock or uMatrix offer this (largely). Fingerprinting relies heavily on Javascript. Many sites work just fine without it or with first-party JS only (fingerprinting is mostly done by third-party trackers).
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#485It's always funny to me to see alternatives to YouTube. The creators I like are on YouTube and rarely anywhere else. So while if I wanted to start vlogging, I might choose Vimeo, I'm tied into going to YT to see the content I want. It's like saying "for an alternative to NBC, try CBS". OK fine but Cheers airs on NBC, now what.
You can use Youtube as a producer, or a consumer (or both). You are right that as a consumer, you are part of a captive audience.
But as a producer, the others might be a good alternative - especially if you are not trying to monetize and/or rely on YouTube recommendation to get discovered. If you're posting family videos for aunt Mildred, and an instructional video linked to your blog post - then there are perfectly fine alternatives to YouTube - of which most people are completely unaware.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#486My biggest problem with this article is that it doesn’t do anything to address built in tracking google has on many pages. Companies embed little snippets of google JavaScript so they can take advantage of analytics. As a result, google can track you whether you use their products directly or not.
And that's exactly why stuff like uBlock Origin / uMatrix / Disconnect / Privacy Badger is not just ethical, it's almost a moral imperative - they stop that kind of tracking, but not fetching those snippets from Google.
Decentraleyes aids further by moving the CDNs into your own machine, killing even the little tracking enabled by those CDNs.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea, maybe you should prioritize 'ironing' it out.
This feature is not even part of the UI yet. It's in progress. I really don't understand why technical people would start recommending its use to others on blogs in its current state. All you create is lots of bug reports coming in to Mozilla, forcing them to put resources into responding to users who blindly followed the blog and now their Firefox is "not working" anymore.
Do you know why there are so many separate things bundled under a single flag? Would it take much effort to add sub-flags for entirely separate anti-fingerprinting features?
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I do. They have too much access to too many people's data. And making billions on the data. Plus having biggest infrastructure and buying best AI and ML brains in bulk. I hope you can add all this together and see the picture.
Kids worry me the most, as this G.Education is pushed on them without choice, being profiled from 1st grade.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until it paid for them them to sell out their Chinese customers. There they didn't think for a second.
I have no more trust in the American government to not spy on its citizens than the Chinese government. If iCloud data is encrypted and only the user has the private key. It's just as secure as being on American servers.
> I have no more trust in the American government to not spy on its citizens than the Chinese government.
This is more than a little hyperbolic. In the US you need a warrant.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#490Any recommendations for a self-hosted alternative for Google Photos?