Why I’m Worried About Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#211

Post by GreeniFi » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #84

GreeniFi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that Google, like Facebook, have a good impression of your CANOE/Big 5 personality type: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extroversion. And in that they have an extremely good assessment of your likelihood to repay loans.

How does browsing/purchasing history tell you about those?

I understand that this has been at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica political manipulation scandal. The basic methodology is take a large sample of people whose big 5 traits you know, and look at their browsing history. Through this you create a model: people visiting x websites are statistically more likely to be y personality. Then when they look at your patterns of web use, they are able to assign you a personality type. Or more specifically group you with others likely to be of that personality type. Of course this assignment may be incorrect, but of course over a large number of people using this methodology, they are more likely to be right than wrong across most people. And although I’m not a statistician, this is the power of big data.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#212

Post by richjdsmith » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

I spent Sunday afternoon researching alternatives for Keep after hitting my breaking point with DontBeEvilCorp a couple weeks ago.

The best I found by a mile is Notion.so. In fact, it is such a great app, it has promted me to consider migrating years of OneNote notebooks, along with trying it out as a replacement for Todoist.

Google photos I replaced with Amazon Prime Photos (from pan to fire, I know, but I'm still oddly happier).

Google Drive was the easiest - I use a combo of DropBox and Arq Backup Tool going to Backblaze B2.

Email has been hard. I have always maintained my own email domain, but had that forward to gmail for the convenience. Not sure what I'm going to do there.

Hope that helped.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#213

Post by wlll » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

I can't read the article becaue their GDPR opt out is (perhaps deliberately) broken, is there a summary?

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#214

Post by earenndil » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

What's wrong with firefox extensions? I haven't noticed anything untoward in my time using it.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#215

Post by 394549 » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

billylindeman wrote: post #210

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

That was also the breaking point for me. I've switched back to firefox, I bought a new iPhone XS (moving off the pixel), I'm in the process of getting my own email server up (though I may just switch to proton mail we'll see), and I'm waiting on a SIM to port my number off of Google Voice. Maybe its all futile, but I'm committed to degoogling my life at least 50%. They've shown their hand and I don't like what I see.

> That was also the breaking point for me. I've switched back to firefox, I bought a new iPhone XS (moving off the pixel), I'm in the process of getting my own email server up (though I may just switch to proton mail we'll see)

Fastmail's another option. Their 2FA authentication options are about as robust as Google's.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#216

Post by foolzcrow » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

It's much much worse than that. They are still tracking you even when you opt out. And there is increasing evidence their search product is filtered based on their political beliefs. So it's not showing you the actual internet anymore and it spies constantly.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#217

Post by kbos87 » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

The fact that they added a setting means nothing. Settings in Chrome seem to randomly (but maybe not randomly?) get rolled back from time to time. Are you going to check the setting every day?

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#218

Post by amelius » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

> but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast.

Isn't this mostly because you don't know yet how the same features work in FF and DDG?

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#219

Post by olivermarks » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

olivermarks wrote: post #181

Chrome turns on the fans on my old macbook air which is an audio reminder to only use it occasionally for specific tasks. My paranoid side makes me wonder if all the fan activity is because it's so busy phoning home all the time 'sharing data'?

My comment was tongue in cheek. I do feel Chrome is v bloated these days though. Opera and Brave seem to run much more cleanly and faster

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#220

Post by marliechiller » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

qubax wrote: post #85

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #49

With all of these emerging privacy concerns, it reinforces my choice to move away from the Android and Google ecosystem insofar as I can. It reinforces my choice to embrace the Apple ecosystem. While their products aren't perfect, they do take your privacy seriously and you do pay for it. But to me, that seems like a fair trade. Additionally, they have second to none customer support, so it's going to take a company…

Every post about google, facebook or privacy, there is a PR comment about Apple. Apple doesn't care about privacy any more than google believed in "do no evil". They collect data on you just like google does. They buy data from other vendors like google does. They sell data on you. The idea that a company who gives data to the chinese government cares about privacy is laughable. http://www.latimes.com/business/techno…

surely confining yourself to just one would limit the reselling of your data though? i.e just 1 company, instead of multiple will be peddling your privacy to other buyers