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It's Time to Panic About Privacy

nytimes.com

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Re: It's Time to Panic About Privacy

#81

Post by cmroanirgo »

StavrosK wrote: post #39
mherrmann wrote: post #36

This was surprisingly weak. Security cameras? Who cares? Here's what we really should be worried about: Google. They know everything . Our browsing history. Probably which porn sites we visit. Our emails. Which services we use. Our passwords (if stored in Chrome). Our schedule. Where we are and where we're going (Maps). Security cameras? Laughable. Google (and to some extent FB, Microsoft and Amazon) is where the dan…

So switch off them. Fastmail is better than Gmail, Firefox is better than Chrome, DuckDuckGo is pretty good, etc. Even switching some stuff is better than not switching any of it.

Heads up. Fastmail is an Australian company under Australian laws. maybe you could try a range of privacy aware email systems (protonmail, tutanota, ...) or roll your own server.

Re: It's Time to Panic About Privacy

#82

Post by cmroanirgo »

toasterlovin wrote: post #54
StavrosK wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So switch off them. Fastmail is better than Gmail, Firefox is better than Chrome, DuckDuckGo is pretty good, etc. Even switching some stuff is better than not switching any of it.

Seriously people, Duck Duck Go is fine for most work-a-day search. I occasionally use Google search for some obscure technical stuff, but that's it.

Is there a reason why startpage never gets a look in, but it's always ddg? I get better results with sp.

Re: It's Time to Panic About Privacy

#83

Post by toasterlovin »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #82
toasterlovin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously people, Duck Duck Go is fine for most work-a-day search. I occasionally use Google search for some obscure technical stuff, but that's it.

Is there a reason why startpage never gets a look in, but it's always ddg? I get better results with sp.

It's probably just that people have heard of DuckDuckGo and it's good enough to not make it necessary to search for a better performing alternative.

Re: It's Time to Panic About Privacy

#85

Post by rchaud »

FakeComments wrote: post #70
rchaud wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This feels like a non-tech person has realized what tech people realized 20 years ago. Really? 20 years ago, tech people realized that billions would be carrying electronic devices that pinged their location and constantly phoned home to 6-10 large corporations?

In 1999 when Palm Pilots and Blackberries were there, showing a clear trend towards greater handheld power after things like brick cellphones and gameboys? Yeah, that was the general consensus about what the future would be.

Back then, the business model that incentivized mass data harvesting didn't exist, and neither did the infrastructure necessary to store and process those mountains of data.

In 1999, only the original Blackberry and Palm VII "could" do mobile data. I use quotation marks because they both relied on a very rickety, bandwidth constrained Mobitex network that could barely send and receive text-only emails for a few hundred concurrent users, let alone real-time geolocation and web browsing data across billions of devices. Even then, Blackberry had to route every single email through their own servers to compress it before transmission.

Blackberry's business model, like Apple's, was built around an integrated hardware-software solution. There was no incentive to sell their data to advertisers. That only started with the search and social media companies that had no other way of making money.

Re: It's Time to Panic About Privacy

#87

Post by StavrosK »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #81
StavrosK wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So switch off them. Fastmail is better than Gmail, Firefox is better than Chrome, DuckDuckGo is pretty good, etc. Even switching some stuff is better than not switching any of it.

Heads up. Fastmail is an Australian company under Australian laws. maybe you could try a range of privacy aware email systems (protonmail, tutanota, ...) or roll your own server.

Yeah, it's too bad, because they're otherwise an excellent company.

Re: It's Time to Panic About Privacy

#88

Post by lotu »

rchaud wrote: post #55
lotu wrote: post #24

This kinda feels like worrying about how the telephone would allow people to spread rumors and damaging information about each faster and further. Or perhaps discriminate against a potential job applicant based on their voice, instead only getting to see a letter. This feels like a non-tech person has realized what tech people realized 20 years ago. Technology makes everything we do faster and more efficient even if…

> This feels like a non-tech person has realized what tech people realized 20 years ago. Really? 20 years ago, tech people realized that billions would be carrying electronic devices that pinged their location and constantly phoned home to 6-10 large corporations?

I don't think they had those exact specific details but the importance of the end user controlling their technology has absolutely been around for that long. The EFF was founded in 1990 and one of the ideas of the open source community is to ensure the end user is in control of their technology not somebody else.

Re: It's Time to Panic About Privacy

#89

Post by mherrmann »

StavrosK wrote: post #76
mherrmann wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can do all those things. But what about the 99.9% of internet users who are not tech-savvy enough?

Are you suggesting that Firefox is harder to download than Chrome, Fastmail is harder to sign up for than Gmail, and DDG is harder to visit than Google?

Yes. Google is the default search engine in most browsers. So changing to DDG (i.e. so that queries you type into the address bar use DDG) in fact is harder. And that's not even talking about blocking Google's tracking, not using them for single sign-on, etc.
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