Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alternatives to Google Products

restoreprivacy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 527 posts

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#491

Post by sundvor »

stevehawk wrote: post #86
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.)

I think half of my comments on hacker news are how much I love Fastmail, which I've used for email, calendar, and contacts for a decade now.

Haha, I just came here to post how could they write that article without mentioning Fastmail.

I need to use my account more, though. So helplessly locked into my Google account for sign ups everywhere.

Perhaps I ought to read that "The Psychology of Dread Tasks" article that is also trending now.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#492

Post by soVeryTired »

blind_boy_grunt wrote: post #489
scarface74 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Snowden?

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#493

Post by jmcnulty »

I wonder, am I the only one who's actually happy to be a paid up Google customer? I own a Chromebook and an Android phone and have migrated absolutely everything onto google drive, play and photos. It's a wonderfully relaxing compute experience. Everything just works and works well.

Yes I know they're mining data about me and are likely making money off that. But has that actually had a tangible negative effect on my life in any way at all? I'm not aware of anything bad, and their products are a boon to my life.

I've invested in a couple of other web sites to satisfy my requirements (like picmonkey) and have a DigitalOcean account for my VM needs, but that's it.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#494

Post by teddyh »

bobsoap wrote: post #275
blub wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it become some sort of fashion statement to be ignorant about privacy? Whenever I discuss this topic people seem to almost take pride in giving their information to Google, Facebook and the thousands of other companies they have no clue about. I think it's cognitive dissonance rearing its ugly head again: those people have tied their identity at some level with the use of the products and an attack on e.g. Google…

I find I'm having trouble arguing in a meaningful way with people who don't share the same concerns regarding the privacy of their data. I'm running out of arguments - no matter what I say, they'll respond with a shrug. "So what? I don't have anything to hide." "So what? They are a big company, surely they won't abuse my data." "So what? How has Cambridge Analytica affected me?" And for the ultimate capitulation: "So…

I usually link to this 2006 column by Bruce Schneier – it is both lucid and succinct:

The Eternal Value of Privacy

https://www.wired.com/2006/05/the-eternal-value-of-privacy/

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#495

Post by ataturk »

Skunkleton wrote: post #428
oldcynic wrote: post #382

Earlier 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 wrote my dissertation on Internet privacy back in 2003. It's sad how much of what I talked about has come true. People at the time thought I was pretty far out there, called me a "privacy Cassandra" and other not-flattering things.

My whole research topic was threatened by 9/11 because after that incident, nobody cared about privacy at all. Up to that point, privacy was gaining ground as an important area of study and a lot of work was being done. Bush II and his junta put an end to all of it for almost 20 years! I can't describe to you what a gut punch 9/11 was for my research and I don't mean to sound selfish, but god damnit, we have lost so much ground because of statism and security theater while giving away our lives to this technological terror.

Worse, companies like Google will happily baseline on the typical Chinese "citizen's" level of privacy, which is less than none! Google doesn't care, they would prefer to have the same policies worldwide and if that policy is baselined at the level of "people have no rights" then that is just fine with them.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#496

Post by jmcnulty »

blub wrote: post #220
robbrown451 wrote: post #209

So I'm one of those who doesn't care if Google tracks me or sells me as a product. [ * ] Is there actually some real, tangible harm that can come to me from using Google products? Not theoretical stuff, not stuff that is less likely than dying in a plane crash. Something that is actually likely to happen, that will affect me in measurable, negative ways? I'm really trying to come up with something, and I'm really try…

Has it become some sort of fashion statement to be ignorant about privacy? Whenever I discuss this topic people seem to almost take pride in giving their information to Google, Facebook and the thousands of other companies they have no clue about. I think it's cognitive dissonance rearing its ugly head again: those people have tied their identity at some level with the use of the products and an attack on e.g. Google…

Everything you have said there is completely intangible. Show me one real world example of where my use of Google products has actually hurt me.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#497

Post by jmcnulty »

robbrown451 wrote: post #469
blub wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My goal when commenting is to counterbalance overly pro-surveilance comments, not become somebody's privacy coach and patiently explain to them all the bad things that could happen. That takes a lot of effort and offers me zero benefit - even in real life, people that I've known for years can be stubborn and they dig in when confronted with arguments. I'm more concerned about the effects of mass corporate surveilance…

My question was regarding the individual, not society in general. I'm not so convinced the use of Google services and the way they get revenue is such a problem for society either, but that wasn't my question. I am interested in knowing whether using these alternatives instead of Google is in my self interest, when all things are taken into account and rationally balanced. I have yet to hear a convincing argument tha…

Ditto.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#498

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

icebraining wrote: post #409
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine that's 'usual'; most sites will do absolute positioning in css, if at all. As you suggest, trying to layout pixel-by-pixel designs is notoriously awkward and best avoided.

I'm not talking about absolute positioning, but calculating positions and width/length based on rules (like the browser does with CSS, but for stuff the browser can't do). For example: https://css-tricks.com/scaled-proportional-blocks-with-css-a...

Sure, I just don't think that kind of thing is 'usual'.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#499

Post by _jal »

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.

> 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.

No offense, but advice like this is useless. It reduces to, "someone I don't know thinks the average person with no special risk factors should think this way about their personal privacy based on who knows what priors."

Different people have different reactions to risk, have different actual exposures to risks, different competencies, and different tolerances for the hassles of opsec. And potential future risks of data slopping about are unknown.

There is no such thing as a "best solution" when talking about this.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#500

Post by kerberos84 »

0xmaverick wrote: post #456
shawn wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, though that would require me to sign in. Does that actually prevent the data from being stored on Google's servers? I'd like to believe that the data isn't being vacuumed up regardless of what the user says, so if you're willing to vouch for it then that would mean a lot.

How can you ever trust anyone like that ? Unless, you see the line of code that is deleting the data ?. It's kind of unfair when people on HN take Apple by their word and for Google "oh is it really deleted though" ?

Because google makes its revenue from user data.
Post reply on HN