The URL restoreprivacy.com is an interesting choice, considering that the Internet and browsers were never private and weren't designed for privacy. The Internet was designed to be redundant and persistent, both of which are effectively non-private qualities.
Alternatives to Google Products
511–520 of 527 posts
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
By "gain" they meant privacy. You gain no privacy... you lose privacy when using iCloud and Apple Calendar
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven’t found a replacement for Gmail yet. I’ve tried fastmail and ProtonMail but both have limitations. From a search engine perspective I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo and I’m impressed with how good it has gotten. With maps I’ve tried various solutions including mapquest, Microsoft, and Apple but nothing comes close to Google Maps.
> From a search engine perspective I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo and I’m impressed with how good it has gotten. I switched to DDG over a year ago and it works great for things that are simple lookups to Wikipedia, IMDB etc. When I have an arcane Windows bug, I end up using "G!". Also DDG isn't that great for latest News but the Image search is pretty good. I set DDG as the default search on my non-techie wife's new PC…
I use it for python related development queries and it satisfies 95% of them these days. It was unusable two years ago. Things have changed.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can an email service work without "reading" your email? Emails need to be indexed to be searcheable etc.
It does not need to read the body of email in order to work. It can index just the header(to, date, subject) or you can use a program on your computer locally to keep your emails and index&search them.
> It does not need to read the body of email in order to work. It can index just the header(to, date, subject)
The header is still personal data. Using the header but avoiding the body does not make much sense.
Again, "reading" emails seems to be an arbitrary distinction. Your emails are stored and served to you, so they are read by HTTP servers, by your browser, by many things. The real issue is the use that is made of those readers: an index that allows you to search your emails more efficiently does not seem to be nefarious, but I definitely agree that other nefarious uses are possible (say some company that would use emails to target people in debt or something like that), just not the case with Gmail.
> You can use a program on your computer locally to keep your emails and index&search them.
Right, but then it's not Gmail anymore, that's just an IMAP mail server with Thunderbird. Gmail started as a smart webmail; being able to quickly search your emails from anywhere, without a desktop client, without fetching thousands of emails before you could perform a search.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#515Did a little version of this a few years back. Think it still holds up - https://impossiblehq.com/complete-guide-leaving-google/
Nice article as well, you could add Qwant & Searx for search; and Tutanota & Posteo for email (though Posteo is not free); and Mastodon for social, just my two cents.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#516I'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…
>Is Maps.Me (which uses AdSense) really better than Apple Maps?
The "Maps (F Droid)" alternative suggested before the Maps.me app is a fork of Maps.Me that doesn't include any tracker/ad. It works pretty well although I've had a few issues logging into my OSM account and it takes a little too long to navigate "up" from a place search. It also features a GPS track recording function that Maps.Me lacks (AFAIK). It's really great and deserves more contributions!
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#517Earlier 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.
Thank you for stating better definitions. From my point of view, Google solves both issues so far. Allowing you to turn off history solves the privacy issues and there isn't any known technical breach so far, which leads me to think they correctly handle the security issue.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 6. Aggregated data collection and use without permissions adds potential risks to the society. (Cambridge Analytica) Everything adds "potential risks". When you talk about risk, you have to give estimates of both the frequency and the criticity, and then compare to the potential benefits. Only then you have all the pieces to take an informed decision, according to your preferences.
How do you define benefits? Sacrifice one's privacy without his permission to make ten of others' life easier, would you call it beneficial? If so, let's rob the wealthy to aid the poor. They can reduce the risks to a certain level if users were told how they are going to use the data and why before using it. Are they going to do that? No, because that increases the cost, which means less profit, which means sharehol…
My point was : it is easy to throw a general sentence to make things look obvious and simple, but it doesn't really help the conversation. At some point, claims must be backed by data and methods.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people trust a company to outlive their domain registrations, and hence prefer not to use a custom domain. A custom domain, commonly of the format, also leaks personal information every time it’s used, whereas a consumer mail provider domain name doesn’t (as long as one chooses a somewhat random address).
> Some people trust a company to outlive their domain registrations That doesn't make sense. Domains last for as long as you pay their > A custom domain, commonly of the format, also leaks personal information every time it’s used It only leaks the info you want it to leak. Want to be pseudo-anonymous? Register something that's not your name. Wow, that was tough.
> That doesn't make sense. Domains last for as long as you pay their That exactly is the problem. Would most people feel confident that their offspring/relatives/friends keep their domain renewed after they're dead? If that doesn't happen at least for a decade or a few decades after the domain owner's death, then anyone who buys that domain may end up getting many external emails that reveal sensitive and confidential information. And what about forgetting to renew a domain within the approximately two months after expiry when it becomes available for someone else to grab it?
> How many people here still use hotmail.com or yahoo.com emails?
This is a complete non-issue in this context, because anyone who had these accounts and died (or forgot about them) wouldn't have their dead/deactivated email accounts taken over by someone else because the major providers don't recycle deleted or deactivated email addresses. Hence my point about some people trusting a company to outlive their domain registrations.
>> A custom domain, commonly of the format, also leaks personal information every time it’s used
> It only leaks the info you want it to leak. Want to be pseudo-anonymous? Register something that's not your name. Wow, that was tough.
I already mentioned "commonly of the format", and didn't really say that everyone does it. My point was an observation on how people seem to handle a custom domain. I see that it was tough to get my points across!
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> are you actually suggesting that Google may have a “privacy issue” per your definition?
Until the GDPR started being enforced, I think it was common practice to collect and sell data without the user's full knowledge and consent. It's a huge change in mindset having to know and explain what they're doing.
Even when not signed in, YouTube remembers the sort of video you've watched and suggests similar ones; I didn't explicitly consent to this, and they didn't tell me clearly what data they were collecting. I'm a former Gmail user; I didn't explicitly consent to Google analysing the contents of my email messages; I think a typical person would not expect that.
If something “feels creepy”, it's probably a privacy breach.
Maybe Google think they have the user's permission. It may be an honest misunderstanding. I'm not saying they're malicious; but I think they have very little incentive to really care about privacy, because their users don't demand it. Third parties will pay for user data.
Also, I think you should be able to choose who you trust. You shouldn't be obliged to trust Google (or Microsoft or whoever); I would see that as a monopoly.