Why I’m Worried About Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#171

Post by tannhaeuser » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:39 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #134

jtmarl1n wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't spark scan your email box like GMail used to? I haven't found anything recent stating they have stopped that practice.

What does that mean? I imagine it has to scan my email if it's to provide the search functionality. If you're hinting at something more untoward could you spell it out for me, I can't find anything that painted it with an ugly brush

A basic mail service is about IMAP (and P0P3), rather than webmail with full-text search. Searching through your mail is performed on your own computer using Thunderbird or another mail client. If your mail provider scans your email for targetting, you should switch to a paid provider where you are the customer, rather than the product.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#172

Post by Boulth » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #168

Boulth wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Fastmail still have their data centers in US? (that'd mean NSA could get the data, as Fastmail doesn't support PGP). Related: https://www.privacytools.io/#email

Honestly, and this is for me personally not my overall worldview, if I'm ever doing anything the NSA would be interested in knowing about it wouldn't be discussed via email I do understand your concern but I've always treated emails as I would postcards

Yes, if you're targeted by nation state it's a bigger problem but I still don't like the passive collection of all my data.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#173

Post by tannhaeuser » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

GnwbZHiU wrote: post #56

demxzy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is looking more like a very good insurance policy going forward privacy-wise. I would like to see more open source browsers though. It feels like we are getting nearer and nearer to browser mono cultures with all the chromium clones. Maybe Ms can release edge as an opensource app with it being far behind in adoption.

There's also Brave browser by Brendan Eich. It's still very young and have issues, but it's getting better over time.

Before using Brave, you should consider if you value their business model as ethical (I don't). What they do is filter-out ads and replace them with ads of their customers.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#174

Post by benbenolson » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

xur17 wrote: post #149

CaptainZapp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. Firefox has the added bonus that it doesn't implement a two tier cookie system. Of which one tier cannot be deleted. This, in combination with the new and improved "sign-in-convenience" convinced me that Google is exactly as dirty as any other tech company and should be avoided like the plague, wherever possible.

> Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. I finally made the jump to Brave and DuckDuckGo, but replacing Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Voice is going to be hard. Gmail will be the hardest since it's attached to so many of my online accounts.

I've been thinking about switching from Gmail myself. I think they have a feature where you can forward all of your email from your Gmail account to your new email address, so you can use that during the transition. Then think of any online accounts that you really need to keep (there aren't many), and change your sign-in email for those.

Perhaps I'll do that this weekend; better now than never.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#175

Post by fredsir » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #167

fredsir wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. You get a new email, set all incoming mail from the old one to forward to the new one, tell the people you are in contact with about the new email, and then just change the email on the services you use when you use it. Don't go around to all the services at once. Just the next time you open up GitHub, change it, next time you open up your online bank, change it, and so on. And after a couple of years, s…

It's a bit weird to say it's not hard at all after describing a multi-year effort.

But see, it's not a multi-year effort. It's at most a couple of hours spread over a couple of years with 99.9% of the effort put in today and the next couple of days.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#176

Post by tannhaeuser » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

gregmac wrote: post #102

CaptainZapp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. Firefox has the added bonus that it doesn't implement a two tier cookie system. Of which one tier cannot be deleted. This, in combination with the new and improved "sign-in-convenience" convinced me that Google is exactly as dirty as any other tech company and should be avoided like the plague, wherever possible.

I keep hearing this, but I'm constantly disappointed by the results I get on DDG. Eg, The first page of DDG shows (old) forum posts while Google shows a couple project sites on GitHub and some relevant stack overflow answers. I'm sure some is personalization, but I've also compared results in incognito and Google is still better. I really want to like it, but I'm not going to sabotage my ability to efficiently find t…

My experience has been the opposite of yours; DDG gets me better, and in particular more up-to-date search results recently.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#177

Post by corobo » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

tannhaeuser wrote: post #171

corobo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that mean? I imagine it has to scan my email if it's to provide the search functionality. If you're hinting at something more untoward could you spell it out for me, I can't find anything that painted it with an ugly brush

A basic mail service is about IMAP (and P0P3), rather than webmail with full-text search. Searching through your mail is performed on your own computer using Thunderbird or another mail client. If your mail provider scans your email for targetting, you should switch to a paid provider where you are the customer, rather than the product.

I understand how mail works trust me, I used to manage a fleet of about 40 mail servers in a past job shudder

I'm sorry but these comments aren't really saying anything with any substance. If my mail provider "scans my email for targetting" - Do you mean ad targeting? Both the mail host and the app are paid products, not ad supported.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#178

Post by BeetleB » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #169

bla2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo is mostly a skin on Bing search results. By using it, you're saying you trust Microsoft more than Google. If that's your intent, cool, but you're not really getting away from the big tech companies by doing this.

Hardly. DuckDuckGo claims not to share my information or searches with Microsoft. I trust DuckDuckGo (not Microsoft) to keep their word. The fact that DDG sources information about the internet from Microsoft is unimportant. I'm concerned about my personal information, not large scale manipulation of search results.

In that case you could use http://www.startpage.com - it's a wrapper around Google, and your information isn't shared with them.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#179

Post by BeetleB » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

baggachipz wrote: post #120

daveFNbuck wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the easy changes. It's much harder to move away from their ecosystem if you're using gmail as your primary or only e-mail provider.

Gmail is really the only thing keeping me in the Google tent. Switching my address after over a decade of use is nigh-impossible. I also use Chrome for development because the debug tools are superior, but everything else Google is an easy switch for me.

>Switching my address after over a decade of use is nigh-impossible.

This is why you should have your own domain. You can switch providers trivially.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#180

Post by fredsir » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #164

fredsir wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. You get a new email, set all incoming mail from the old one to forward to the new one, tell the people you are in contact with about the new email, and then just change the email on the services you use when you use it. Don't go around to all the services at once. Just the next time you open up GitHub, change it, next time you open up your online bank, change it, and so on. And after a couple of years, s…

Yea this is what I did. Little by little. If you make a plan, and are dilligent you’ll be totally off @gmail.com in under a year. Make sure you switch to an email address on a domain you control, not @some_other_cloud_service.com that you’ll want to switch off of later.

Indeed, its not hard. I went through it this summer. However, I switched from a personal domain to a fastmail domain. Why? My domain registrar fucked me over.

At that point, I had used my personal domain for close to 10 years when suddenly it stopped working. I contacted them and they said that it was put on hold because I hadn't paid the yearly expense. It would cost 16 times the normal cost to get it back, or I could wait a couple of months until it was released and see if I was able to buy it again at the normal rate before it was taking by someone else. I asked what they meant by expense? I usually get a reminder from them on email a month before due date, every year for the last 10 years, but my latest expense reminder from them was dated a year back. They explained that they have had trouble sending out reminders for this particular TLD for a while now. I asked why they hadn't contacted their users about these problems, to which they replied that it's my own responsibility to get the expense paid in due time, and that the reminders are just a friendly reminder, nothing more, nothing to be relied on, and I have to pay 16 times normal cost or it will get released in a couple of months.

I decided that I was not going to pay that, and that I wouldn't be using them as a domain registrar again. Luckily I wasn't that happy with the domain anyways and have never been. I have been fiddling with ideas for a new domain name for years, but have yet to find one, so it wasn't that big of a loss. But I sure as hell think it's shitty service from my domain registrar.