201–210 of 246 posts
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I have to say I'm almost more shocked at the number of "shocked" comments here than at the page itself. Not only because of what you mentioned, but also one would expect an audience like HN to know about this. Google has even nagged me with notifications to take a look at this page several times in the past. Also, for some weird reason (maybe because I'm using browser extensions?) my entries seem to come from the fut…
I would've agree with you in the past, but I think there are a number of reasons that there is always a huge amount of "surprise" when things like this are posted: 1. Ignorance is bliss: People don't WANT to know about this kind of thing. It can be upsetting, anxiety inducing, uncomfortable, dystopian, etc. so it "feels" a lot better not constantly thinking about and analyzing the ways in which your tracked 2. Assump…
100% agreed with this statement: I'm no longer surprised when technical users seem to lack basic knowledge about a particular technology because no one can specialize in everything
I read somewhere that there are lots of hubris & privileged self-ego stoking happening in the IT industry (just look at the tough super technical interview questions you need to answer in every IT job ever). But more than 50% of the software developed or designed in the world is not good enough.
I still have to come across a strong argument that would really make me worried about this kind of tracking done by Google.
I guess I'll be the lone voice chiming in that I find this pretty useful. There's been a number of times I've been like "oh, what's that song I asked Google to identify a month ago?" or "what was that page I managed to find last year by searching about [x]?" that I've been able to remember via this tool. Yeah, Google knows everything about me. C'est la vie. At least it's useful. What exactly is the threat model that…
I have to say I'm almost more shocked at the number of "shocked" comments here than at the page itself. Not only because of what you mentioned, but also one would expect an audience like HN to know about this. Google has even nagged me with notifications to take a look at this page several times in the past. Also, for some weird reason (maybe because I'm using browser extensions?) my entries seem to come from the fut…
Being "shocked" by something doesn't imply that you didn't know it was happening. There's plenty of things that I am perfectly aware are happening every day that shock me nonetheless.
On this subject https://myaccount.google.com/purchases Turning off all of the controls under myactivity won't stop Google from scanning your emails to track any purchases you make. The only way to stop that is to switch off of Gmail.
This is quite troubling and enlightening to the point that I'll have to start redirecting my purchase receipts to a non gmail account. Are there any other 'hidden' urls to expose what other data Google is siphoning off our private transactions or conversations for that matter? I've had all controls under activity disable a long time and periodically check to make sure they stay that way. This one crosses the line! To…
If you have a non-gmail account, why are you using gmail at all?
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Do you enjoy your free email account, free maps, free YouTube and free search?
My email (gmail) is bound with so many services (both online and offline) and it is part of my online identity. It would be so much effort to change the email now. I don't think there is an alternative to google maps which is in the same level as quality and richness in information. I would be totally lost without google maps when I'm traveling to other countries, especially when it comes to public transportation lik…
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> What is the business justification? They want to give users the ability to inspect the source data for various further derived features they provide, like shipping notifications.
Can you explain how storing the dollar amount, and item purchased helps with tracking anything?
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This is what finally prompted me to move to Fastmail after being on G Suite since 2007. Even though I have to pay for Fastmail and was grandfathered into free on G Suite. Pretty happy with it so far. Now going through the process of reducing all the places I use Google services. Moved my personal stuff from GCP to Digital Ocean. Gmail to Fastmail. Chrome to Firefox / Safari. Currently seeing if Zoho is a good substit…
I switched to DDG a few weeks ago, and it's surprisingly better than I remember. Though for technical searches I have to add a second context parameter "go programming FOO" instead of "golang FOO" etc. But that isn't so bad. I've only fallen back to google a couple times, easy enough with ddg `!g search`. May switch my browser to Brave, Opera or Edge too... though there are aspects of each of them I'm not fond of. Th…
You should use !s instead of !g. !s sends your search to Startpage, which uses Google search but in a more privacy-protective way.
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Fastmail is unfortunately very bad too now due to recent Australian legislation.
What happened?
Jesus fucking christ. This is scary. They can build a full profile of me with all this data.
Do you enjoy your free email account, free maps, free YouTube and free search?
> Do you enjoy your free email account, free maps, free YouTube and free search?
It's not free -- you're just paying with data instead of cash.
In any case, no, I don't. I do use YouTube (only on a device and account that is used exclusively for that), but I actually pay money for my YouTube usage.
Why do you guys care so much that google is tracking your purchases? They will just that use your own habits to give you more personalized ads or recommendations which is better than random ads not related to your own habits. How does it hurt you as a consumer?
That's one reason I care so much right there. I 100% don't want "personalized" ads. But I don't for a minute believe that's the only thing they do with that data.
More generally, it's simply none of their business unless I choose to share it with them, and it makes me very angry that they don't have a basic level of human respect about that. (To be clear, I don't single Google out on this -- I have this objection to the entire internet advertising industry.)
I don't need to show any kind of imminent harm in order to object to that. I'd also object to someone coming into my house and photographing everything in it without my permission, even if they never did anything with the photographs.